The Intrigues of Sora Kazano
by Tsukisamu Sayako
Summary: Having survived his first year of high school, Roxas Uchiyama is now a second year at Radiant Garden High. Between dealing with Sora, juggling schoolwork, and getting caught up in abnormalities, will his second year be just as crazy as his first? You bet.
1. New School Year

_Pre-story A/N: If you have not read _The Melancholy of Sora Kazano_, I would suggest that you do. I will not be explaining some of the things that I will be referring to. But, if you've read _The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya_, you should be fine. Enjoy the sequel  
_

**

* * *

Chapter 1 – New School Year**

* * *

To say that the SOS Brigade did absolutely nothing over the summer break would be a gross understatement. Surprisingly, none of the SOS Brigade members had gone out of town. Doubtlessly, the other three couldn't because of their individual assignments regarding Sora Kazano. My parents didn't have any plans for the great beyond away from Radiant Garden since my dad was, in essence, not a veteran of his company, so he couldn't possibly take long vacations.

As such, I stayed in Radiant Garden for the entire summer save for a couple of trips to Twilight Town here and there with my brother to visit his university. I even took up a summer job to pass the time.

Of course, one way or another, Sora had managed to organize one SOS Brigade event at least once every two weeks.

Actually, in his own words…

"The mysteries of the world do not sleep or lie in wait for someone to come along to acknowledge it! We have to go out and search for them and bring them to light! No one can have a break!"

I didn't know that I had signed up for this non-paying position. In fact, I didn't even _know_ that this is a job. I mean, seriously, what other high school clubs out there meet up over the summer?

Wait, I'm pretty sure there are plenty, but that's only because they have a competition or something!

For us, there is no such noble goal to compete in a prestigious setting.

Oh yes, I can just imagine my entry under "extracurricular activities" on my college application.

"The SOS Brigade – general manager; serve as the errand boy/servant of a deranged, but brilliant student at Radiant Garden High"

I guess it's a good thing I'm working part time this summer; even though I really hated being a cashier for McScrooge's.

So, when the new school year started, I embraced the event with open arms. I longed for the regular routines of going to school, snooze in the boring classes, going to the clubroom, going home, and repeat on the day after.

Granted, seeing how it was a brand new school year, I had almost completely embraced the fact that I would have no more business to deal with Sora Kazano.

How wrong could I have ever been?

* * *

The hill loomed over me with familiarity and I stood at the bottom looking up, not caring as students—some that I recognized, others not—passed by and continued their merry way up the hill. I realized at that moment how much I detested the hill. How it made me sweat and tired before the day even started.

What brilliant architect had the bright idea to put the public high school on top of a god forsaken hill!?

Oh well, it can't be helped. That's life after all. Just like me being stuck in the SOS Brigade. Here's to semi-praying that I would be put into a class with either Naminé or Riku, and not Sora. After all, what's the point of entering second year if there wasn't a change in class make up!?

"Roxas, my merry friend!" came a familiar voice followed shortly by a familiar laugh.

I turned around to see Axel and Demyx walking up toward me. Now that I think about it, those two seemed to be everywhere together since they met in our first year. What the crap?

"'Sup, Axel?" I greeted with a nod of my head.

"Ready for a new school year?"

I shrugged.

"Here's to hoping that we're in the same class!" my red-haired friend raised his free hand in mock toast.

"Here's to hoping that we're _not_ in the same class," I joked as I pretended to clink his glass in the air.

"Oh, Roxas. You wound me!" Axel replied. I think he's been hanging around Tidus too long.

"Yeah, yeah," I waved dismissively.

"Alright, you two," said Demyx as he wrapped an arm around each of us. "Quit goofing off and let's get going."

"Yes, mother dear," Axel and I replied simultaneously.

The three of us laughed.

* * *

Just like last year, on the first day of class, we were to report directly to the auditorium for the start-of-term ceremony that bored the hell out of everyone. Only the bright-eyed freshmen appeared to be hanging on each word the principal was uttering.

Was I like that a year ago? No, I wasn't. I remember now; I had "overslept" and so had to essentially run up the hill to get to school on time. That meant that I basically "slept" through the entire ceremony. How nice.

The principal droned on and on about his expectations for this upcoming year and the basic rules of the campus. Having heard it once already—not to mention the weekly pounding of said rules into our heads by Mr. Leonheart, I scanned the student populace for no apparent reason and found my eyes locked onto the cold eyes of Sora Kazano.

I blinked in confusion as I stared at Sora, who gave me a look of accusation. I could only reply with my own look of "What? What'd I do?"

He continued to glare at me as if I was the reason why his life turned out this way. I frowned slightly at the thought. I hope that wasn't actually the case. Resisting the urge to shrug outright, I broke the eye contact and forced myself to look forward, hoping that Sora would do the same.

Somehow I doubt it since I had the creepy feeling that I was being watched for the rest of the boring speech. You know that creepy-crawly feeling you get when you go into a haunted house? Yeah, that's the exact feeling I'm getting right then.

It's really not pleasant to be standing with the hairs on the back of your neck standing up for thirty minutes long.

I can safely say that the speech must be the principal's way of torturing his students before the school year even started.

Will it discourage our troublemaking?

Ha! You wish.

* * *

Argh!

What the crap?

What the hell?

What the f- Okay, I promised myself that I wouldn't cuss that strongly, even though it is in my mind.

As it turned out, whether by coincidence or by obvious design—I believe the latter, Class 2-G had simply become Class 1-B transplanted onto the second floor. Originally, Class 2-G was supposed to be the Honors class, with the students getting prepared for the private schools like Midgar University (best engineering program), University of Nibelheim (best chemistry program), and Atlantica University (best biology program). Speaking of Atlantica University, it was founded by the same company that started up the record company with which the Gullwings had signed a deal with. Just in case you forgot.

But I'm rambling.

Maybe there was no Honors class for my year; everyone opting to be boring and stick with the easy stuff rather than work extra hard so they can be guaranteed a place in the prestigious schools. Maybe everyone in Class 1-B wanted to work extra hard and thus was placed in the Honors class.

I never remembered signing up for this…

Now that I think about it, I doubt Axel would've wanted to join Honors. Demyx, knowing his parents, would've probably been forced into Honors. And Sora… Well, whether he joined Honors or not, he probably would have had the same amount of time he had to search for mysteries and the wonders of the world.

So I shall deduce that there was no Honors class. Or maybe Honors got moved. Whatever.

In any case, yes, Axel, Demyx, the posse that surrounded Zexion Walters in the old world and the new, and everyone else who had made up 1-B were in my new class.

And, of course, _he_ is in the class.

"What the!?" he exclaimed upon entering the room none-too-softly. "And here I thought second year would be different! This is just like first year!"

Yes, Sora Kazano is in my class. Again.

The urge to give Sora the evil eye is difficult because somehow my seat ended up unofficially in front of his. Again.

And as Mr. Leonheart entered the room for homeroom, stilled for a bit before backing up and rechecking that he got the right room, called roll, and assigned the seats via a cup, I knew that nothing has changed at all.

I think Mr. Leonheart thought so too, because he didn't even bother with the introductions and went straight into the boring stuff we needed to deal with for homeroom before lessons started.

I could only sigh.

* * *

After class, out of habit, I went directly to the clubroom. Sora had seemed to disappear to nowhere. He had basically screamed "See you tomorrow!" at me before running out of the classroom.

And here I thought he was still interested in keeping the SOS Brigade busy with mundane things. I guessed wrong.

When I got there, Naminé was already there, reading a book that she had borrowed from the library the previous Saturday. I was amazed to see that she was almost done with the book already. A second, equally thick, book sat underneath the book that she was currently reading. Undoubtedly she would be reading that as soon as she was done with her current one.

I pulled out a folding chair from where they rested over the summer and sat down in it, wondering why the heck I was here in the first place. Neither Naminé nor I had greeted each other; a mutual understanding had passed between the two of us: if Naminé was reading, it's best not to interrupt. That understanding came shortly after the entire episode where she changed the world. I supposed that the Data Integrated Thought Entity took my words to heart and programmed some manifestations of frustration into Naminé. As such, even though she is still her usual subdued self, she at least will voice her annoyance at us when we're being idiots.

Speaking of idiots…

"Good afternoon!" greeted Kairi as she entered the room with her bookbag slung over her shoulder.

"Oh, Sora isn't in here?" said Riku as he followed the third year girl in.

Ha, did you really think I really thought those two were idiots? I'm just kidding of course.

"Sora went home right after class," I said before opening my bookbag to pull out my Gamestation Compact to play Fantasia Knights 358/2 Days. The handheld and the game were my birthday present from Tidus and Yuna over the summer and I found myself replaying the game many times in the course of the summer.

"Playing that game again?" said Riku as he peered over my shoulder.

"Get me another game then," I replied before pulling out the stylus and began a random battle against a level 45 creature by the name of Bloomer.

Riku looked thoughtful. "I hear that 'The Day of Sagittarius' is really good."

Ha, you stinking creep, take that! Victory dance time…

I looked up at the silver-haired psychic and raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that game a strategy game?"

"Yeah, real-time strategy. You should give it a try."

I shrugged. "Maybe."

"Here, coffee," said Kairi as she placed a mug of the dark liquid in front of each of us. A bowl of sugar cubes and a creamer was also placed on the table and each of us went about adjusting our own flavors for the caffeinated drink.

The first day of class was—how shall I phrase it—utterly dull and normal.

* * *

Off to the next day!

Class, was, as boring as it can be. However, it would appear that the second year teachers are either really dense when it comes to class disruptions or they'd just rather overlook such incidents because they're jaded or whatever. Every single class, people would keep passing notes to each other.

Sora was no exception.

Every five minutes, he would poke me in the back with his mechanical pencil. I would have to turn and get the note from his desk or he'd just keep poking me. I would then have to read the note, which usually said something about "Why is this class so boring?", "When's break?", "Why can't we go outside yet?" and other complaints.

If I had mind-reading, precognitive, or the usual psychic powers—like the psychic hotlines you see on the television, maybe I would know the answers to all of your complaints. But since I'm neither a psychic in the "traditional" sense, nor a know-it-all data being, I don't know why. So stop asking!

Strangely enough, part of me wished that Zexion Walters wasn't destroyed and that he was in class right now. He would've put a stop to all this shenanigans that's going around in Class 1, er I mean, 2-G.

Though, I seriously doubt he could've stopped Sora from jabbing my back every five minutes even if he tried.

I can just see the new entry on Wikipedia under "Torture". Jabbing your victim in the back repeatedly with a mechanical pencil. Damn you, Sora.

So, when the bell rang, I finally breathed a sigh of relief.

However, before I could do anything else, Sora grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and proceeded to drag me up from my seat.

"What the hell, Sora!?" I exclaimed as my tormentor continued to drag me out of the classroom and down the hall. I know we got plenty of weird looks from students who were out during lunch break, but Sora didn't seem to care. I was too busy trying to free myself from Sora's iron grip on my jacket, but let me just tell you this. Trying to free yourself when someone is holding onto your jacket collar is as hard as tying a piece of floss onto your taste bud.

"Sora, let go!" I said exasperatedly, but of course, Sora refused to give in to my demands.

"Where the hell are we going then?" I asked.

"Field," he said simply. I heaved a huge sigh and allowed myself to be dragged across the school campus to the empty soccer field.

Once there, Sora let go of my jacket and I slumped to the ground without support, having allowed the energetic teen pull me like a dog on a leash. I breathed a sigh of annoyance before propping myself up on my elbows.

"What the crap, Sora?" I muttered with irritation. Sora stood over me with a wide grin but didn't answer. I looked behind him and…

Lo and behold. A familiar sight.

"No," I said.

"Why not!?" he exclaimed.

I opened my mouth and was going to say that I had already helped him with his alien symbol nearly four years ago, but remembered that he doesn't actually know that I'm that John Smith that had helped him. So, instead, I said:

"Look up, Sora. The sun is still in the sky. I would rather not get suspended for drawing graffiti under broad daylight."

Sora crossed his arms and harrumphed. "It's not graffiti. It's a message to outer space!"

"I doubt the administrators would accept that excuse." I said.

"You're no fun!" he screamed as I walked away.

Yup, Sora had managed to procure another chalk drawing device and was going to "draw graffiti" on the Radiant Garden High School field.

"Now if you had thought to do it at night, I might've agreed," I shouted back with a slight grin on my face.

* * *

That afternoon, I paid for my "insolence" by working on the SOS Brigade website with Sora breathing down my neck, dictating every single thing he wanted the website to say, etc. etc.

As I worked on the site, Naminé had read halfway through the other thick book that I saw her reading the previous day; Kairi was flipping through a costume magazine, courtesy of Sora—who stole it from the fabric superstore in the marketplace; and Riku was being his plain old self: laid back, seemingly carefree, and always ready to be sycophant.

A really tiny part of me wondered what would happen if Sora died.

Bad train of thought. Chances are Armageddon would occur if that happened; right, Riku?

At the end of the hour, I managed to add seven more pages to the website that were all linked to the front page. One of them had the SOS Brigade proclamation on it, another was dedicated to the movie we made last year, while the rest had information about the each of us as a SOS Brigade member.

Well, as it pertains to the movie anyways.

"We need to put these pictures on there too," said Sora as he reached for the mouse and opened a folder that has been hidden amidst all the stuff that was in his special folder. My eyes bugged out when I saw the thumbnails.

"We're not putting that on there," I said.

"Yes, we are."

"No, we're not." And for the next hour, I lectured Sora on the perils of putting personal information, especially provocative pictures that Sora had taken of Kairi on that fateful day last spring, on the public domain and how we were already in the danger zone by putting our profiles on the website.

Sora, of course, wasn't phased by this lecture and proceeded to argue his case. I argued that those pictures are only going to make our site look more like a porno site than a legitimate student group website.

"So?" was his awesome reply.

Heaving a great big sigh, I realized that Sora wasn't going to let this one go. "Fine, how about this. I'll make a hidden link from the movie page and put the pictures on the hidden page. Would that be fine?"

"That's good," he replied simply.

Resisting the urge to sigh again, I did was I said I was going to do and published the new website onto the page.

"Now we have got to get more traffic on the website!" Sora exclaimed cheerfully.

I can only pray that we don't. Maybe I should go ask Olette and see if she can get Pence to make me a flash game so I can further hide those pictures.

Sora then kicked me out of the swivel chair and I went back to my designated seat, looking over to Kairi who didn't seem embarrassed by the fact that she had really suggestive pictures on the website now. She had, like Riku, started on her homework. I guess I'll do the same and pulled out my books to work.

The day came to an end rather quickly.

As we got ready to leave…

"Roxas, you're coming back to the campus at 8 tonight," he said.

"No," I replied.

"You said you would help at night."

"I refuse to be a part of your scheme. We're in high school, Sora," I glared at the frowning teen.

"So?"

"I don't want to get suspended. We have the Preliminary College Admissions Exam coming up, remember?"

"We won't get suspended," he replied.

"I think we will. Everyone knows about your alien message from middle school. I wouldn't be surprised if the administrators go for you tomorrow morning."

Sora looked thoughtful and realized that I was right. He scowled with annoyance.

"Fine," he muttered distastefully before storming out of the room.

"I think my job's going to be hard this week," said Riku with a slight frown.

"Sorry," I replied, feeling a bit guilty for the poor guy.

He shrugged. "It's expected. Sora's been unusually merciful this past summer."

"Ah."

"Hey, let's go to McScrooge's," said Kairi with a smile. "I think we deserve a start-of-the-term celebration."

"Without Sora," added Naminé.

"Right."

"I'm good with that," I grinned. A gathering without Sora dominating over us is nice.

Still, I wouldn't have minded Sora coming along.

* * *

With my refusal to help him perpetrate another transgression, it came as no surprise then when Sora began on his daily rounds through the school campus again during break. Maybe his spidey-sense is tingling and he thinks there's a mystery on the campus but has yet to find it.

That mystery would soon be found in the two weeks that he spent investigating without any of the SOS Brigade. Thinking back on it, it would make sense that Sora had spent such a long time looking for the source of mystery.

After all, the mystery was to become another member of the SOS Brigade.

_

* * *

Disclaimer: _Kingdom Hearts _and_ Haruhi Suzumiya_ do not belong to me. This piece of work is purely fictional and free to readers. That doesn't give anyone the right to post this on a separate website without my permission though._

_A/N: Woohoo, the long-awaited sequel to _Melancholy_! This will, of course, detail their second year. Some of the chapters will be based loosely on what happened in _Haruhi Suzumiya_ novels while others will be original. So who wants to guess why I'm going to add a new SOS Brigade member? Anyways, thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next chapter._

_On a side note, I come up with the lamest things... Preliminary College Admissions Examination!? (PSAT), Gamestation Compact!? (Gameboy/PSP), and Fantasia Knights 358/2 Days!? (Uh... you should know the references). Man, I need to be original. TT_


	2. Introducing Who?

_To reviewers of Chapter 1:_

_Nightmaresbeast: Well, I do want _Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days_, but it's not out yet, haha. I can't guarantee that there will be another umbrella scene in this fic, but I will try my best to at least incorporate a cutesy scene for Sora and Roxas somewhere along the way until the end of the fic. Thanks for the support._

_A-dizzle: Well, I think the bossing around is a given, haha. Sorry to hear that you were out of it when you reviewed. And don't worry; you'll probably be able to catch every update before I even get to the end of the fic._

_Dark-ranmaru: Here's the next chapter! I hope you'll find the next member of the SOS Brigade as interesting as the others._

_Kixiku: I wouldn't put it to the extreme that it's the _essence_ of awesome… but much thanks for the support._

**

* * *

Chapter 2 – Introducing Who?**

* * *

For the two weeks after school started, the SOS Brigade clubroom was a quiet place. We gathered after school every day without fail and worked on our homework. There were no crazy events being planned by our fearless leader and no other student with mysteries on his hands came knocking on our door.

Now granted, 75 percent of the time, Sora wasn't in the clubroom. Where he went off to after class every day I cared not to know. But I had a strange feeling that whatever he was doing, it wasn't going to be good for me. And call me a masochist, but I was looking forward to whatever Sora discovered and wanted to share with us.

Still, needless to say, those two weeks were the good times…

Of course, all good times must come to an end, and this was no exception.

* * *

On the Tuesday three weeks after school started, Sora had, once again, disappeared from class right after lessons were done for the day. He didn't even bothered to say "Good-bye" or "See you tomorrow" before he zoomed off to who knows where.

"Sora seems in a rush," said Axel with an arched eyebrow.

"Maybe he's got a boyfriend," suggested Demyx. I snapped my head toward him and glared. Noticing my look, Axel laughed.

"Looks like someone's jealous," he teased in a sing-song way.

"No, I'm not," I huffed.

"Yes, you are," grinned Demyx. Both of them simply grinned at me, knowing perfectly well that those grins would grate on my nerves.

I scowled at their faces and picked up my bookbag.

"Whatever. I'll see you guys tomorrow," I said before heading out of the room to the clubroom. Behind me, I could hear the soft snickering of the two stooges.

God, they're acting like girls!

Though, why the hell do I care whether Sora's going out with someone else? We're technically not a couple.

Oh wait, I kissed him last year.

I wonder if he remembers that…

In any case, I made my way over to the SOS Brigade clubroom and saw that all the others were there already.

That could only mean one thing.

Sora's making a big announcement.

"Everyone's here, already, huh?" I said as I crossed the room to reach my seat at the table. Strangely enough, no one answered; not even the usually friendly Kairi. The atmosphere was so tense that Naminé didn't even turn a page in her book as we waited for Sora to show up.

What the hell is going on!?

Sitting in that deathly silent room for five minutes was really unnerving. As I looked from Naminé to Riku to Kairi, each of them had their heads bent down in anxiety. Was the end of the world coming? Did Sora figure out that he's the god of this world and was planning on remaking it? What was happening!?

I could feel the beginnings of a panic attack coming.

Just when I had enough and was planning on leaving lest I started hyperventilating, the door to the clubroom slammed open.

Sora stood there with his fists on his hips like a triumphant leader.

"Sorry to keep you all waiting!" he said cheerfully before bounding into the room like a hyperactive child.

"What's going on, Sora?" I queried. Sora, as usual, didn't hear me.

Goddamn it.

"It took me a really long time to figure out what we needed, but I figured it out! Since the SOS Brigade is a club, it only makes sense that we need new members, right?"

I blinked at him. Like anyone would want to join this who-knows-what-we-do-as-a-club club.

"Come in!" he shouted and I turned my head toward the open doorway.

A shaggy brown-haired boy stood there looking slightly flustered yet at the same time, he seemed rather at ease.

"Welcome our newest member, Denzel Eames! He's a first year!"

"Hiya," he greeted with a wave before stepping in.

The hell? Sora found a new member? But didn't he find all the special people that he wanted to find already? I mean, there are Naminé, Kairi, and Riku. Why did he need another member? Is he a replacement for me or something? Was something bad going to happen to one of the other three that prompted this replacement?

While the questions sped past my feeble brain like a long chain of bullet train cars, I looked from Naminé to Riku to Kairi. Surprisingly, the tension in each one of them seemed to have dissipated completely. Naminé was back to reading her book. Riku's smirk was back. And Kairi smiled happily at the newcomer.

"Welcome to the club," said Riku.

"Did you want coffee?" asked Kairi.

"Ah, sure," the teen had said. Strangely, a blush had appeared on his face.

Hmm, it would seem that our newest member is shy around girls. I shall have to exploit that in the future.

Yeah right. I'm not as vindictive as Sora. Exploiting the weaknesses of my foes… I don't even know if this Denzel Eames would be one of my foes. If so, what would we fight over?

Enough of this irritating train of thought.

I watched as Denzel took a seat across from Kairi's usual seat and looked about him.

"Do you know what we do in here?" I asked with a slight frown.

"Nope," the boy replied easily. "It's a nice clubroom though," he added, as if it was an afterthought. Maybe we have another Riku on our hands.

"And you have no qualms with not knowing what we do?"

"Not really. I hadn't exactly planned on joining a club when I started high school. But at Sora's insistence, I came to check this out. I must say that having another place to go to before I go home is actually pretty nice."

I think my eyebrows twitched at that. This guy's starting to sound like a combination of me and Riku. That's a scary thought.

"Everyone play nice now!" exclaimed Sora as he grinned widely while sitting in the swivel chair.

I could only frown at the sight of that and accept the change as he had made it so.

* * *

That first week with Denzel was strangely dull. Personally, I had actually expected him to approach me fairly soon after his induction into the SOS Brigade and tell me that he was a special person with special powers and that Sora is the one who made it that way. The lack of a private meeting between the two of us makes me rather uneasy around the first year. I hope that my original belief that he was a replacement for me wasn't actually true.

Needless to say, I breathed a huge sigh of relief—metaphorically of course—on that Friday a week after Denzel Eames's joining of the SOS Brigade.

As we got ready to go home—Denzel had long since realized that whenever Naminé is done reading, that meant that the day in the clubroom was over, Sora, as usual, bounded out first whistling yet another tune of happiness.

Denzel left the room next, followed by the rest. I had taken my sweet time packing up my stuff. Truth be told, I didn't want to stop playing my game. I was almost at the end again. But, alas, it would make no sense to stay behind when my coffee was gone and the snacks that I had brought with me long since devoured by me and everyone else, namely Sora.

I slung my bookbag over my shoulder and pulled out a copy of the room key that Sora gave me after that incident last spring. He didn't want to wait around for me again.

Fine, play with my feelings, why don't you!

But that's beside the point.

After I locked up, I was surprised to see Denzel leaning against the wall next to the closed clubroom door. He had a knowing smile on his face.

"I thought you went home already," I commented.

"You were expecting this," he replied.

"Maybe," I answered.

"I trust that it's because you already know the nature of the other three?" he inquired. We began our way down the hallway toward the staircase.

"I've known for a year now. To be honest, I hadn't expected you to take this long to set up this meeting."

"Had to clear it with the higher ups, you know how it is."

"Yeah," I said mindlessly. It was the same with the other three as well. "So are you going to explain what you are before you show me proof of your word or what?"

"I thought it'd be best to just show you," he grinned.

"Okay…" I raised an eyebrow in question.

"Follow me," he said with a grin.

The two of us made our way through the locker building and out of the school campus. At the bottom of the hill, we turned toward the Dark Depths. To be quite honest, I've never actually really been to the Dark Depths. I know that it's one of the grandest natural sites of Radiant Garden… but the fact that it's called the Dark Depths isn't all that appealing to me.

Still, I hear that hundreds of people visit the place every weekend.

We passed through the ticket booth; the ticket taker simply waved us thru. I raised an eyebrow at that.

"We don't have to pay?" I inquired.

"He's one of my colleagues," the teen answered.

"So you're not the only one of your… 'kind' here?" I struggled to get the right words out.

The shorter teen laughed. "Just like Naminé, Kairi, and Riku, I've been charged with an assignment to observe Sora Kazano. I hadn't expected him to find me just like that. It's no mere coincidence, you know."

"I've heard that plenty of times, thanks," I muttered.

The teen simply laughed.

We passed through the Crystal Fissure and entered the large canyon aptly named the Great Maw. Around us, several tourists were taking snapshots of the distant ruins on one side while on the other stood the great metropolis of Radiant Garden. But we didn't stop there.

Eventually, Denzel took me to the cliff that overlooked the majority of the Dark Depths with the ruins of an industrial castle in clear view. I scrunched my face in slight distaste. That ruined castle had been built on the ruins of an ancient temple. You could barely see the walls of the crumpled temple, but we know that it's there.

While I glared at the industrial castle, Denzel had walked towards the edge of the cliff and pulled out a switchblade.

In alarm, I looked around and noticed that there was not a single soul around us. Panic began to set in.

I must've squeaked or something, because the shaggy brown-haired first year turned around to look at me with a raised eyebrow.

"Are you one of those radical Data Integrated Thought Entities?" I blurted. "Were you sent to kill me too?"

Denzel blinked at me. He obviously had no idea what I was talking about. With a smile, he replied, "If you think I'm similar to Naminé, you're wrong. I'm no interface."

"Then why do you have a knife in your hand?"

He looked at the switchblade in his hand. "Oh. Sorry if it bothers you, but I need this to show you where I come from."

"Where you come from?" Panic has left my brain… for now.

"Yeah. I'm not from this dimension," he grinned before turning around once again. He raised the blade up before cutting straight down in front of him. Strangely enough, the blade didn't just pass through air. Instead, a ripping sound could be heard, as if the blade was cutting through coarse fabric. I stared in shock to see a cut made in the air in front of Denzel.

The newest SOS Brigade member pocketed the knife and pulled at the seams to make it larger until the bottom of the seam hit the ground where we stood on.

"There we go," he said cheerfully. "Let's get going, shall we?"

He gestured for me to go through first. I glared at him like he was insane.

"It's perfectly safe, I assure you," he said.

I exhaled loudly and gulped.

Stepping through that seam was rather disturbing, since the place that you end up in has no sky, no ground, just a swirl of colors, numbers, and clouds?

Denzel followed me in shortly and he bent down to "zip" up the seam that he had just made.

"Where are we?" I asked. This area strangely reminds me of data and I was skeptical about the fact that Denzel wasn't actually an interface.

"We call this place 'Between and Betwixt'," the teen answered. "It is the area that connects to the different dimensions."

"So you're a dimensional traveler."

"We prefer the term 'sliders'," he replied before setting off in a specific direction.

"O…kay," I replied lamely.

"If you're from another dimension, how did you know to come to my dimension?"

"Sora Kazano gave us the knowledge. Surely you would know this."

"Enlighten me," I said dully. And here it comes, the all-important "three years ago".

"Four years ago," he started.

Oh right, I'm a second year now. So technically it _is_ four years ago now, huh.

"I found out that I could traverse through parallel dimensions by means of this blade." He patted his pocket for emphasis.

"And of course, you somehow knew that Sora Kazano was the one who gave you the powers."

"Exactly." We had stopped in front of a nondescript area of the strange place. "Using the powers that Sora gave me, I departed from my own dimension to your own. In the process of course, I met several sliders from other dimensions as well. They were all in your dimension to find Sora Kazano."

He had pulled out his special switchblade and cut another seam in the fabric of space?

"I'm assuming we're going to your dimension?"

"Yup," he replied with a grin. Once again, he separated the seams further until the end of one seam was at level with our own feet. Quashing another surge of uncertainty, I stepped through the seam…

And ended up in a world that looked strangely like my own.

"You had been searching for a world that didn't look like your own, right?" laughed Denzel as he noticed my look of astonishment.

"Well, yeah."

"And here I thought that having been in Sora's Closed space would've taught you otherwise," he grinned.

"And you would know this, because?" I inquired with a raised eyebrow.

"Riku told me."

The hell?

"Why?"

"He recognized who I am that first day I met you guys," he replied nonchalantly before leading me away from the cliff edge where we had arrived at.

"How?" I was ever more confused by this change of events.

"He, like me, is a dimension traveler."

"What!?" I stopped for a moment, which made the younger teen stop as well. He huffed in annoyance, which reminded me oddly of Sora, and shook his head at me.

"Is this twenty questions?" he asked me with a raised eyebrow before laughing. "Joking aside, did you honestly not remember the detail that Closed space is just a separate dimension made by Sora? Or did Riku fail to mention that to you?"

Oh… right… That entire spiel about the Anthropic Principle or whatever the hell it was.

"Oh," I could only reply lamely.

"In any case, that's the only similarities the two of us have. He is limited in which dimensions he can go to, namely Closed space, while I'm free to go to any dimension that I want to as long as I know of them."

"So how many parallel dimensions are there?" I decided to ask.

"Four."

"Only?"

"Sora got the idea in middle school that the regular definition of the 'dimensions' in geometric terms should not be limited to mathematics. So, with the manifestations of his powers, his subconscious consequently created four parallel dimensions. Closed space is an exception. So technically you could say that there are 4.5 dimensions."

We passed through what should have been a ticket booth and ended up at the bottom of the hill at Radiant Garden High School. Well, not _my_ high school.

"Each dimension is similar in the sense that they have basically the exact layout, landscape, and structure of the world. The technology's similar and in essence, all general knowledge is the same. What differs between each dimension is that there are no two persons from different dimensions that look the same."

"So…"

"In other words, there is no one who is your 'equivalent' in this dimension."

"So I don't actually have an alter-ego here then?"

"Nope. Just like there's not an alternate Denzel in your dimension. In essence, the dimensions are there to support more life than possible on a given world. So if you want to be correct, there are approximately 25 billion people who live on Earth, both ordinary humans, humans like myself, and interfaces like Naminé."

"Are there interfaces in this dimension?"

"No," replied the teen simply. "But there are more people like me and Riku in this dimension."

"How do you know?"

"I just do."

We had stopped in front of a strangely familiar house.

"Ah!" I exclaimed, noticing for the first time why it looked so familiar. Although the sign was now "Eames" rather than "Uchiyama", there was no doubt that this is the same exact house as my own back in my own dimension.

"This is my house in this dimension. It should look familiar to you, no?"

"It's my house!"

"In this world, it's the Eames residence," smiled Denzel. "Come on, I want you to meet my family. They know all about you."

"What are you, some kind of stalker?" I glared at him.

"It's our job to keep tabs on people near Sora," he replied mysteriously.

We walked up the steps to the front door and Denzel opened the door with a set of keys that strangely enough, looked nothing like my own set. I surmise that I couldn't expect the locks to actually be the same.

"I'm home!" announced Denzel as he stepped into the threshold of the house. "And Roxas is here!"

A squeal echoed through the house and I was suddenly tackled by a little girl who apparently was Denzel's little sister.

"Yay, Roxas is here!" she cheered as she hugged me tightly. The feeling of a little girl latching on to you like a leech is an interesting experience. Of course, it's not one that I'd like to have again when the said-girl started rubbed her face against my shirt like a kitten.

"Marlene!" exclaimed the first year teen, aghast at the behavior of his little sister.

The owner of the name, of course, paid no heed to him. Hmm, this is strangely like Sora and me.

"Marlene," a deep voice came as the head of the household came into view followed by his wife. Both of them had a smile on their face and appeared just as excited to meet me as Marlene. "Let the guy go, he's staying for dinner, after all."

"Yippee!" cheered the brown-haired girl before she rushed off toward the living room. Her parents simply shook their heads in amusement.

"Roxas, this is my dad and my mom," said Denzel. "And the twerp that you just met is my sister, Marlene."

"I'm not a twerp!" came Marlene's voice.

"It's a pleasure to meet you at last," said Mr. Eames as he shook my hand firmly.

"Pleased to meet you too," I replied.

"Dinner will be ready shortly, Denzel. Did you want to show him more before dinner?"

"Yeah," said Denzel. "We'll be in my room."

"Of course, dear," said Mrs. Eames happily. She reminds me oddly of my own mother.

We made our way upstairs and into his room, which coincidentally was my room. There was a huge difference, of course. Where my room is painted in a warm golden color with a shelf of containers full of stuff, his was painted in a calming light blue color with a shelf full of books. But otherwise, the layout was eerily similar.

"Are you sure you're not _my_ alternative self in this world?"

"What do you think?" he replied.

I shrugged. "I doubt I act like you."

"Then that's that," he replied simply before throwing his bookbag onto the motorcycle-themed comforter.

"What did you want to show me?" I asked as he gestured for me to sit down on his bed.

"This," he said, booting up his desktop computer.

"It looks like an ordinary computer," I said.

"We developed this interdimensional communications network through Between and Betwixt. The data numbers that you saw in that place were manifestation of our communications."

"So are all sliders like yourself from the other dimensions besides the one I live on?"

"No. There are a few of us who are from your dimension. They ended up being my superiors due to their proximity to Sora Kazano."

"I see." The both of us remained silent for a few seconds as the computer finished booting up.

"So why are you telling me all this? You, out of everyone, have shown me the most about themselves."

Denzel gave a snort and I stared at him suspiciously. "Well, Riku's basically shown you everything you need to know about his abilities. As you could obviously see, his job is very straightforward. Naminé can't show you everything she knows because it's impossible to explain what she knows if one lifetime. Kairi, of course, can't tell you everything or the future would be jeopardized and two versions of one time period would result. You've experienced such a parallel timeline before."

Ah yes, that fateful week where Naminé had changed everything.

"As for me, there are many aspects to my job that I can explain to you fairly fast. For example, this." He pulled up a program that began to show a series of strange graphics on the screen.

"What is it?"

"This is a program we use to simulate the existence of the different dimensions. Each one of sliders would input details about their dimensions into the program and we would look at the details and see if there are coinciding events and whatnot."

"Coincidences?"

"Some might be coincidences, others might mean that the dimensions are merging. My organization essentially is working to keep the dimensions separate. If the dimensions coincided and become one, it would be the death of humanity as we know it."

"Sounds like Riku and the Closed space," I muttered.

"There are many versions of Armageddon. Ours is just yet another version. Riku's would be Closed space replacing your dimension, though the other dimensions might not be affected at all. Kairi's would obviously be the complete breakdown of the time frames and Naminé's would be, well, the end of the universe where no intelligent life exists."

"You seem to know a lot about everyone."

"Well, when you've spent the past four years communicating with others in this dimension who essentially share the same ideals as those three, it's easy to speculate."

Oh, I see. Wait a minute…

"Does that mean people in this dimension believe that there are aliens, time travelers, and psychics in the world?"

"More or less. The United Nations of this world differs from yours in that we have a committee dedicated to alien diplomacy and making sure that the countries of this world don't mistreat the aliens like a lesser race."

"I see."

I wonder what would happen if Sora decided to pop up in this place. I'll bet he'd love it.

"Denzel, Roxas! Dinner's ready!" came the voice of Denzel's mom.

"Any questions?" he asked as he closed the program.

"Yeah. Can you link my computer to this interdimensional network of yours?"

"Sorry. The network is strictly for slider access only." He smiled at me.

Dammit!

* * *

Dinner was pleasant to be sure. Marlene, as it turned out, wasn't as bad as she originally was when I first met her. She was just a very touchy-feely kind of girl who is curious beyond a fault.

Denzel's parents made small talk with me and I got to know them better. Strangely enough, Denzel's dad was also a slider while his mom was a psychic. Marlene was the only "normal" one out of them.

Guess that explains why she's insanely curious. Or maybe that's why she latched onto me since I'm the only other "normal" one at the dinner table.

In any case, dinner came to an end rather fast and I bid my farewells to the Eames before Denzel escorted me back to the Dark Depths.

"So there are a lot more people here with special powers huh," I commented.

"We believe that at least half of the population on this dimension's Earth has special powers. Most of the powers are different from what you'd expect in your world though."

"I see."

We stepped into Between and Betwixt once again before passing out into my own dimension.

"How do you know that this is my dimension?" I asked once we stepped out of the interdimensional highway of sorts.

"We just know," he replied. "It's just something Sora provided to us when he made us."

"As everyone else said," I said.

Denzel laughed at that comment. "It can't be helped. You're stuck in a group of people who sincerely believe Sora's our creator. You should accept that fact."

"Yeah, but it doesn't mean I have to like it," I retorted.

"True." We had exited through the now-empty gate leading into the Dark Depths. "This is where I leave you."

"I'll see you tomorrow then," I said before continuing on my merry way.

"Later."

So Sora's motley crew is now complete. I guess I should prepare myself for another long year…

Dammit.

_

* * *

Disclaimer: _Kingdom Hearts _and_ Haruhi Suzumiya_ do not belong to me. This piece of work is purely fictional and free to readers. That doesn't give anyone the right to post this on a separate website without my permission though._

_A/N: So I had a dilemma in the beginning of this chapter when I was deciding who I introduce next. But, I had already decided who would be who for most of the Kingdom Hearts characters. And since the dimensional traveler hasn't been introduced in _Haruhi Suzumiya_ (probably never will be), I hadn't thought to assign the role to someone. In the end, I decided on Denzel (who is very much non-canon…) over "canon" KH characters (Rai, Fuu, and Vivi came to mind) because he's the one who most likely would be seen associated with the SOS Brigade members and also would be seen as younger than the rest of the others._

_Also, props to whoever can figure out where I came up with Denzel's last name._


	3. The Literature Club Publication

_To reviewers of chapter 2:_

_Dark-ranmaru: I'm glad that you liked Denzel. I will try to update fast, but my brain's slightly fried right now from all the standardized tests and the outings I've taken with my family in celebration of no more tests, haha._

_A-dizzle: Well, Sora is a genius after all (wink). And truthfully, I doubt he has any normal hobbies. I mean, he's as eccentric as they come. If he has a hobby, it might be staring into space with a powerful telescope in hopes of finding an UFO. And yeah, no more new members. I think I've covered all of the grounds that Sora talked about with the four people now._

* * *

**Chapter 3 – The Literature Club Publication**

* * *

About a month into the school year, it was time to turn in the application to renew the SOS Brigade as a club at Radiant Garden High. And as usual, the job to do that was delegated to me.

Fine by me, I had a copy of the original completed application anyways.

So, after filling the forms out, I turned it in to the student council office.

A week later, the results came back in the shape of a fourth year student by the name of Setzer Gabbiani.

When I went to the SOS Brigade clubroom that fateful afternoon, I could hear loud voices in the clubroom. Having missed the fact that the sign that hung over the door to the clubroom was no longer "The SOS Brigade", I stepped into a room where tension was so high that I could feel myself cowering. Sora's fists were on his hips and his lips were set in a thin line.

Oh yeah, Sora was angry.

Off to the side, Denzel seemed upset by whatever was happening while Kairi looked back and forth between Sora and the silver-haired teen. Naminé had gone to "La-la land" reading her latest encyclopedic book. And strangely enough, Riku was nowhere to be found.

"What's going on here?" I asked. "Who are you?"

The man looked at me with a pair of cold eyes. His lips were also set in a thin line. Underneath the long hair, I could see a couple of scars here and there, which made me wonder what kind of person this guy was to have so many scars. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up and cleared his throat.

"I'm Setzer Gabbiani," he said. "I'm the new Student Council President."

I never remembered voting for him…

Actually, I don't think I voted for the student council at all last year. Oops.

"As for the reason why I'm here," he said coolly. "The student council has decided to reject the SOS Brigade's renewal for club registration."

"What?" I blurted. "Why?"

"This club did not do anything worthy last year that would garner another year of legitimacy. This clubroom is now officially the Literature Club room. However."

I waited for him to go on.

"Since the Literature Club did absolutely nothing last year, the Literature Club is going to be forced to disband unless you guys produce a publication for the school once a month for the rest of the school year."

"Once a month!?" I exclaimed in shock. Naminé had looked up from her book with a thoughtful look upon her face. Obviously she was finding this idea rather intriguing.

"Yes," he replied simply. "I look forward to the first publication a month from today."

"Can't we just make one large publication and publish it at the end of the year?" I suggested.

The fourth year hummed. "Very well. You may do that. But if there is no publication at the end of the year, this room will be cleared out before next semester and access to this room will be given to another club."

He seemed to be talking to me more than he is to Sora. What the hell?

"Alright," I replied.

He pushed his glasses back up.

"Good day," he said in a rather patronizing tone before leaving the room.

With the departure of the fourth year, I breathed a sigh of relief and turned around to a most disturbing scene once again.

On Sora's face was an eerie smile, it was as if he was really excited about the project that we had no choice but to accept it.

"That was brilliant, Roxas!" he exclaimed.

Wait a minute, did he just compliment me?

"I've always wanted to be an editor in chief for a publication." He began rubbing his hands together in excitement. Oh boy, what the hell have I gotten us into this time?

He leaned toward me with that excited face of his and a great wide grin on it. "Do some publicity to get some people to submit some work of their own. I'm going to go home early to work on the layout of the magazine."

He skipped over to his chair and threw his bookbag over his shoulder. Before he left the room however, he quickly turned his head.

"Oh, don't forget the personal ads too."

With that, he disappeared out of the room.

I grumbled at the thought of needing to make several flyers to advertise for the Literature Club's publication and ruffled my hair in annoyance.

"I'll deal with the flyer," said Kairi with a smile on her face.

"Riku's waiting for you at the library," added Naminé as she flipped yet another page.

I blinked with confusion at the two. "What?"

"I think you heard them right…" said Denzel, raising an eyebrow at me.

"Yeah, I did. But why?"

"You'll see," said Naminé simply.

"Great," I muttered with annoyance. "Fine. I'm going." I slung the bookbag over my shoulder with irritation and left the room where three smiling faces seemed to mock me.

Maybe I'm just bitter that I'm going to have more work to do over the next couple of months. With the PCAE and generally being in second year of high school, my life is just peachy isn't it.

I think someone up there must really like to torture me. Or maybe it's all Sora's fault. Yeah, I'll accept that. It's all Sora's fault.

So, following Naminé's instructions, I made my way over to the school library and stopped short when I saw a familiar face standing next to Riku in front of the glass doors.

It was none other than the guy who had just visited the SOS Brigade club room.

Setzer Gabbiani.

"I trust that you have already made each other's acquaintance," commented Riku with that creepy grin of his.

"Uh… yeah," I said lamely. I scrutinized the taller silver-haired teen, noticing that he was taller than Riku by a head, and found the same grin on his face. The glasses he had been wearing were no longer on his face. In fact, the man had pulled out a deck of cards and was playing with it before I arrived.

"Let's go to the roof," Setzer said lightly. "I'm itching for a smoke."

The crap?

"Eh, might as well," shrugged Riku. The three of us then began our way up three flights of stairs in the library building—which also contained the orchestra rehearsal rooms and a small screening theater. You know, for a public high school, this place surely has a lot of extra random rooms.

We came out of the building at the roof and immediately, Setzer pulled out a cigarette from his pants pocket and lighted it.

"So, what the hell is going on here?" I decided to ask.

"The agency has hired Setzer here to serve as a source of tension for Sora," said Riku simply.

"Tension? What the hell for?"

"Have you noticed that Sora has been rather bored and frustrated for the last month?" he asked.

Now that you mention it… He has been rather irked by the fact that our website was still rather unpopular with only a thousand or so visits since we last updated it and I'm willing to be half of that was from Sora constantly clicking on it to check the counter. And with him being preoccupied by the lame website that he has often grumbled about, he apparently hasn't had the time to come up with things that would actually interest him.

"So?"

"Do you remember what happens when Sora gets frustrated or bored?"

"Oh." Closed space. "So how many occurrences of Closed space has been showing up lately?"

"Too many to allow my colleagues and I to have a normal life," he replied solemnly. "We've hired Setzer so that Sora would feel the need to do everything to keep the SOS Brigade a club."

"And thus you can control the number of Closed space, am I right?" I leaned against the mesh fence that enclosed the rooftop. Apparently this was a suicide hotspot a long time ago.

"You are absolutely correct," he replied.

"How did Sora react after I left?" asked Setzer, blowing out a cloud of smoke from his cigarette.

"He was excited," I replied. "Do we actually have to publish this?" I asked wearily.

"Well, if you don't, I'll be forced to take action," the silver-haired president said. "I have to keep up the image for Sora after all." He grinned at me.

I could only sigh. Everything is always seemed to be about Sora, isn't it?

"You could publish it earlier. I'm not particularly looking for a grandiose thing," he added.

"Knowing Sora, he'd want to make it perfect," I muttered.

"Take as long as you need," he replied with another smoke. "I actually look forward to it."

"Just pile more work on me, why don't you?" I grumbled, running my hands through my hair exasperatedly. Setzer laughed heartily.

"I'll pull some strings to get some submissions in. I'm assuming you'll be taking on most of the editing?"

"Probably. If there's some crazy stuff though, I'd just give it to Sora."

"Any clue as to how you guys are going to present it?"

"Absolutely no clue," I replied simply.

"I'm sure Sora will come up with some way," grinned Setzer.

I wouldn't doubt it.

* * *

The following day after class, I was mildly surprised to see the number of flyers that had been posted throughout the campus. Either Kairi was a genius at publicity or Naminé helped her out with all the publicity stuff.

"The Literature Club publication?" inquired Demyx as he looked at a pink sheet of paper that had been passed out during homeroom.

"50 munny for a five lined ad and 500 munny for a half page personal ad…" read Axel. "That sounds rather cheap."

I can only shrug.

"I wonder what the Literature Club's looking for exactly," pondered my musician friend out loud.

"Whatever you want to write about," I replied with boredom. Demyx raised an eyebrow at me.

"And how would you know?" he asked.

"I'm working on the publication," I answered.

"What happened to Sora's club?" blinked Axel.

"It's not legitimate. So I'm a member of the Literature club."

"You're a member of the Literature club?" snickered Demyx. I shot him an evil eye.

"I've learned to read for fun," I muttered with annoyance. "Naminé's a great influence." Well, part of that was a lie, but I wasn't going to tell _them_ that.

"In any case," I said with a dismissive wave. "If you're going to submit something, drop it off at the Literature club room or the Literature club box in the student center." I then went back to the book that we needed to read for English.

"Yeah. I'll put in a personal ad to look for a date for you, Roxas," grinned Axel. I blushed and sputtered.

"Axel! This isn't a dating publication!"

"So? We're in high school. I'm willing to even post the 500 munny for a full page ad," he grinned.

"Asshole," I muttered. "I'll put in a half-page ad posing as you to confess your love for Demyx then," I replied with a straight face. Axel's mouth dropped open as Demyx blushed profusely.

"Roxas!" he cried in embarrassment. I could only snicker wickedly at my two friends.

"You're on, Uchiyama," grinned Axel with a competitive glint in his eyes. I returned the challenge with one of my own and smiled in anticipation of our antics.

Demyx could only groan exasperatedly at the two of us.

* * *

That afternoon, I was mildly surprised to see several submissions already made for the publication. Several were personal ads, ranging from the very personal ads like Axel's, to simple shout-outs to friends.

As if any of that would really matter. But whatever, we get free money, that's all I care.

Quickly separating the article submissions from the ads, I went to my designated seat and began working on my homework like the others. Naminé, surprisingly, wasn't reading that afternoon. Instead, she was writing down a string of sentences in such a pace that I thought she was writing a five paragraph in-class essay in thirty minutes or something.

It was also rather strange that Sora didn't show up in that first hour right after classes officially ended.

At about four o'clock, the door to the Literature club suddenly slammed open to reveal a smiling Sora.

That could only mean something bad has happened to someone.

"Sorry I'm late!" he announced cheerfully.

"What did you do this time?" I immediately asked with suspicion.

"Just because I'm late, that doesn't mean I did something wrong!" he retorted defensively. Now I knew something _definitely_ was wrong.

"Anyways," he continued on, pulling out a stack of papers with many boxes on them. "I drew out a general outline as to what we're going to be putting in the newspaper." Since when was this thing a newspaper!? "I've also managed to convince the Journalism club to let us use their printing machines to print out five thousand copies of this."

"Did you plan on circulating it beyond the school?" I asked.

"Look over it," he said as he threw the layout at me. As expected of course, goddamn slave driver!

Heaving a sigh, I looked over the ten paged layout while Sora went through the meager submissions that we received that afternoon.

So far, so good. Front page, check. Title, check. Shameless advertisement to get more members for the SOS Brigade, check.

Wait, WHAT!?

As it appears, right smack in the middle of the thirty paged newspaper Sora's laid out for us was a two-paged spread advertising for the SOS Brigade. I have no clue how it's going to look, but that's what Sora had written down.

I lifted my head to glare at Sora, who was currently reading through some of the articles, tossing yet another into the wastebasket across the room from him.

It was rather distracting.

I flipped through the rest of the pages, noticing that Sora seemed to have made the entire newspaper layout with symmetry in mind. The first page and the last page of the newspaper appeared to be exactly the same, just mirrored. With that done, I set the plan aside just as Sora threw out the last submission into the wastebasket. Apparently only one out of the some ten submissions passed the test.

"I can't expect much today," he said aloud. "We've only started requesting for submissions today after all. By the way, good job on the flyer."

Oh hey, a Sora compliment. Who is it to anyways?

He stretched in his seat and swiveled around before yawning.

"I'm bored. I'm going home," he said and promptly left the room. "Don't forget to write your articles too!" he added right before he went out the room.

Great. Just wonderful. I have to write an article too!?

* * *

Whether Setzer did manage to pull strings or Sora had willed it subconsciously—I shall give Sora the reason of doubt this time, since Setzer had actually told me he was going to do it, on the day after we had posted flyers advertising the Literature club publication, also titled the Radiant Garden High Chronicle, the SOS Brigade, I mean Literature, club room had turned into something out of the nightmare of a famous celebrity.

"Wow!" exclaimed Sora as he and I stood in the doorway. I stared at the mountain of paper on top of the rectangular table in the room with shock, dread, and annoyance. Without needing prompting from Sora, since I knew perfectly well that Sora would've tossed 90 to 99 percent of all the submissions out, I went over to the pile of papers on the table and began sorting through, tossing a couple stupid entries into the wastebasket.

It was only lucky for me that Naminé had handed Sora her work, a godly five paged thing.

"This is from you?" Sora asked. Naminé nodded quietly.

Sora hummed with interest as he then sat down in his swivel chair and began reading.

While he read, the other three arrived and as if they all read my mind, helped me to sort out the entries, creating two piles: one for Sora, one for us.

As I picked up one of the entries, I was mildly surprised to see the stack of entries that Sora might approve of to be a sizeable height. Oh well, more work for Sora. Yes!

The latest entry was titled "The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya". Okay… strange title, but whatever.

As I read through the first half page of the entry, which included the paragraphs "Haruhi seems like the kind of person who shouldn't have any worries. But, she does. Only the thing that's bothering her is that 'The world is too mundane.'" and "To her, the "Non-mundane things" are any kind of supernatural phenomena, meaning she often thinks things like 'I can't believe there's not even half a ghost appearing before me.'", I was suddenly reminded of my own strange situation, being caught in the middle of a supernatural tornado and at the center of it all was, instead of this girl called Haruhi Suzumiya, Sora Kazano. I wonder if my life was just a record on paper… I quickly looked at the author of the entry and found no name.

What the crap?

Looking up at Sora, who had started perusing the entries that we delegated to him, and then back at the entry, I wondered if I should let Sora read this. On one hand, it would be interesting if Sora picked up on the parallels and maybe I'd have a better time convincing him that the world was revolving around him than this Kyon character. Yet, on the other hand, I'd be losing my trump card, right?

Still, my curiosity about his reaction wins out. Hey, who knows, maybe he would be dense enough to think that there was absolutely no parallel between us and that fictional world. And so, I placed the entry on the stack for Sora.

After an hour of sorting, we managed to finished sorting through the mess of papers and while the others began reading some of the more "mundane" and stupid stuff as Sora would aptly label it, I began working on my own paper, opting to detail my foray in the alternate world nearly a year ago.

Of course, it was only proper that I renamed everyone.

So Sora will be Monica, I will be Ross, Riku can be Chandler, Naminé shall be Phoebe, Kairi can be Rachel, and Hayner can be Joey. Excellent.

Three pages into my fantastical tale, I began smiling at the various mishaps that I had experienced back then. I was so engrossed in my work that I never realized that someone was standing behind me peering over my shoulder until I felt an excited exhale on the back of my neck.

I jumped in my seat and slowly turned to see a smile glaring back at me.

"This looks interesting!" Sora exclaimed. "When are you going to finish it?"

"When you stop breathing down my shoulder," I muttered to myself.

"What?"

"Tomorrow," I replied more clearly.

"I'll be waiting!" he announced.

I turned my attention up to look at the others and the pile of papers that had been in the room. Even with the others, it would appear that more than half of the submissions weren't publishable either. Still, from the height of the papers, we could easily fill half of the paper as Sora had laid out for the publication.

After that strange compliment Sora gave me, our fearless leader then proceeded to clear her throat to criticize the piece of work that Denzel had submitted for publication.

I kind of feel sorry for the first year. But, at least it isn't me.

Besides, Denzel didn't seem at all flustered by the reprimand that Sora was giving him. I doubt I could ever be that accepting with Sora.

* * *

For the next week, we continued our filtering of the submissions, passing the more interesting ones to Sora while leaving the more mundane ones to us.

Surprisingly, Sora seemed willing to take on the majority of the work. Besides just reading the submission drafts, and then proceeding to edit the hell out of some of the submissions—with inputs from Riku and Kairi, he also decided to undertake the design of the paper, choosing where to put which article would go where. It was also a shocker that he decided to put in a bunch of mundane articles rather than the articles that we had thought would've made it into the publication.

In the process, we also managed to accumulate over than 3000 munny just from the personal ads. As Sora aptly put it, "We'll beat the school system and get money anyway!"

Though, I'll bet that if Sora had his way, he'd just use the money allocated by the student council for the Literature club. He's just that sneaky.

With the SOS Brigade working so hard, it wasn't long before we completed the draft of the paper and was ready to put it on actual newspaper.

And so, in a remarkable two weeks after Setzer Gabbiani first set the project for the Literature club, the Radiant Garden High Chronicle was published. I, personally, had to pull some last minute adjustments to pull my work off of the paper, which Sora had believed to be worthy of front page. That personal decision was made under the advice of everyone else. In replacement, we put in one of Naminé's works, which was authored under an alias. In fact, a vast majority of the articles that Sora ended up accepting were from Naminé herself. It would appear that she has a penchant for writing.

When the paper was distributed, it was difficult to walk around the campus without seeing the newspaper. Each student was reading the 30 paged thick thing and while some read the articles, others were more eager to look at the personal ads. It was, how shall I say it, the rage of the times—at least for a week or so.

"This paper looks more like the Sunday magazine that comes with the Radiant Garden Times," commented Axel.

"I think that was the point," I retorted.

"By the way," Axel said with a glare. "I hate you."

I simply grinned at him.

As you might as suspected, I did indeed put in a small personal ad for Axel and Demyx. On the 17th page, almost right smack in the middle of the paper, was a simple three lined block:

"Less than three.

From the Flurry of Dancing Flames

To the Melodious Nocturne"

I'm pretty proud of myself there, even though Axel hadn't actually bothered with the personal ad for me.

And yes, I had to pay 50 munny for the stupid thing, but it was worth watching Axel glare at me and Demyx scowl at me with a blush on his face. Insert maniacal laughter.

That afternoon when I saw Setzer, he gave me a thumb's up for the paper. I could only surmise that the Literature club is safe for now.

Although the publication was a success—so successful that not one newspaper was seen littered on the ground or left untouched on the counter of the student council office, I was more than surprised to find a gleaming copy of it in magazine form some two weeks after the publication was sent out. Someone had gone through the troubles of actually making a magazine out of this.

What the hell?

As I picked it out from my locker, I flipped through the pages with weariness. Especially since _my_ story was the cover story.

There was no indication as to who made the thing, but I have inkling that it might've been Riku.

After all, this entire thing had been orchestrated by his organization, right?

Oh, how wrong I was two months later.

* * *

_Disclaimer: _Kingdom Hearts _and_ Haruhi Suzumiya_ do not belong to me. This piece of work is purely fictional and free to readers. That doesn't give anyone the right to post this on a separate website without my permission though._

_A/N: Oh my gosh. This took forever! I kept getting caught up with other stuff to focus my brain on this chapter. So very sorry this took a long time to update. In any case, I felt that the entire publication process was slightly rushed. Maybe I should've put in some specific article quotes, but meh, it's better to just wonder about what's actually being written and being put into the publication, right? And yes, I deliberately put in an excerpt from Baka-tsuki's translation of _The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya_ in here. Roxas's reaction reminds me of existentialism (sweatdrops)._

_Oh yeah. Props to whoever can pick up what other reference I made in this chapter, haha._


	4. All Hollow's Eve, Part 1

_To reviewer of Chapter 3:_

_dark-ranmaru: Well, you'll find out in chapter 6. As you can obviously see, this next two chapters are part of one single episode. And thanks for the review. Sorry I took forever to update, hehe._

* * *

**Chapter 4 – All Hollow's Eve, Part 1  
**

* * *

A year ago at this time, I probably would have thought nothing of Sora's current disposition. In fact, I probably would've attributed this melancholy to his eccentricities. After all, the world is boring and not even All Hollow's Eve can bring strangeness to this world.

But, having been sent back to the past last year, I believe I have reasonable doubt to say that Sora isn't being all pissy and sighing once every minute simply because the world isn't any different on All Hollow's Eve. In fact, I believe that Sora's being this way because he still hasn't managed to find his helper four years ago—John Smith.

I actually don't doubt that Sora had gone through the yearbooks they stocked in the student center to look for John Smith. And of course, he wouldn't find such a person, since he's actually me and all.

Sure, it could just be a coincidence and my first theory is actually correct. But when it comes to Sora, coincidences usually don't happen. He might say it's a coincidence, but I know that his subconscious had willed it this way. Just ask the other four, they'll all agree with me.

Or was it them who came up with this theory and I agree with them? Ah whatever.

So, when All Hollow's Eve was less than one week away, it would've only made sense that Sora made us dress up again. Right?

* * *

Two weeks before All Hollow's Eve, everything was find and dandy. Everyone at the high school were all discussing their plans for All Hollow's Eve—what club was doing what, where's the best place for candy, who are you dressing up as, all those stuff. As for myself, I've "opted" to skip out on All Hollow's Eve bash this year.

Why you ask?

I have a nasty habit of eating too much candy after I go trick-or-treating. As thus, I get a terrible stomach ache and usually end up in the hospital by the next morning. How I managed that, I care not to go into the details.

And because of this, I was more-or-less forced by my parents to stay home and be the designated candy giver. Oh, how evil they are.

"Hey Roxas," said Axel as he twirled his pen while sitting at his desk, which was conveniently placed beside mine after the latest reseating arrangement.

You guessed it, Sora's behind me yet again.

"Yeah?" I asked with boredom.

"You heard about the party at the Seventh Heaven?"

"Yeah. I'm not going though."

"What? Why not? You went last year," he asked with surprise.

"He ate too much candy last year," answered Demyx. I shot him a look of hate, which missed him completely. "His parents had thought that once he was in high school, he wouldn't be that overindulgent. Boy, were they wrong." He grinned at me.

"Thanks, Demyx. Thanks a lot," I retorted sarcastically.

"No problem."

"Are you dressing up anyways?" Axel asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. "What's the point?"

"Dude, you need to get into the spirit of the holiday! Got it memorized?"

"Whatever," I waved at him dismissively.

He scoffed at me and smirked. "Well, I guess we'll just go have fun at the Seventh Heaven without you."

I scowled at him. "Shut up." Then decided better. "I hate you."

Axel and Demyx simply grinned at me.

At that exact moment, as if a great beast had been disturbed, a great big sigh sounded behind us, making the three of us jump in surprise.

Slowly, I turned my head to see Sora laying his head on his crossed arms on the desk. Where the hell did he came from!?

"What's wrong with you?" I decided to ask as Axel and Demyx pretended they didn't notice Sora, but, seriously, I could see them looking at us out of the corner of their eyes.

With his head buried in his arms, Sora muttered a reply that strangely sounded like "stupid cheese omelet". Don't ask me why, it just does.

"What?" I asked with slight bewilderment.

His head snapped up immediately and he gave me his best Sora death glare. I don't think I need to hint as to what's coming up next.

His mouth opened and…

"None of your business!"

* * *

I'd like to think that the solution I found to cure Sora's current melancholy was all due to my work, but I supposed that there was an element of coincidence involved.

In any case, as I was riding my bike to school that afternoon after Sora's outburst in the classroom, which, I will comment, no one paid any attention to besides me since it was expected of him by everyone else. Now that I think about it, if there were any new students in the class, they would've immediately turned their attention to Sora and stared at him like he was some kind of freak.

Not that he isn't or anything. But certainly he isn't one to actually make himself sprout tentacles and engage in hentai sex now would he.

Where the hell did that thought come from?

I'm rambling.

So as I was saying, as I was riding my bike to school that afternoon, having opted to skip out on going to the clubroom since a melancholic Sora would only mean a boring day, I happened upon a gleaming poster tacked up on the street lampposts. On it was an advertisement for a costume contest to be held at the Twilight Town Convention Center on All Hollow's Eve.

The prize? Ten tickets to the best amusement park on this side of the world: The World That Never Was.

While I'm not a particular hardcore thrill seeker, I have no qualms to riding the monster rides at that place. Assuming I didn't eat an hour before or after that is.

In any case, I didn't know whether we would get the grand prize, but the runner up prizes were still decent enough for me to tear the poster down so I can just leave it on the computer keyboard for Sora to look at it the next day.

Little did I know that I didn't need to actually do that and someone else would resolve Sora's melancholy.

* * *

On to the following day!

As typical of Sora, when he's unusually bored or had just managed to secure a godly discovery—ha, ha, he didn't show up to class that following day. _And_ having known Sora for an entire year, I had no reason to worry for Sora's wellbeing. If he hadn't shown up the next day then I'll start worrying. But for now, it's just life as it happens for me.

To be quite honest, as I was walking toward the clubroom that afternoon, I felt free and utterly at peace. The poster that I had gotten from a random lamppost was sitting solidly on top of the computer keyboard, Sora wasn't breathing down my neck the entire day like he has becoming prone to do nowadays, and there was no huge worries for me or the rest of the SOS Brigade.

Due to this, I took my time to leisurely walk to the clubroom, enjoying the ordinary and familiar scenery that was Radiant Garden High School. On that particular day, it was worthy to note that the Radiant Garden High football team was practicing on the field. I was never one for football; the thought of brutish teens painting their faces with black paint and banging into each other like bumper cars isn't exactly what I call sports. For me, I prefer the more interesting game of Blitzball, seeing how my brother's picked up the sport this past summer while he went abroad. Apparently Blitzball is a more popular sport internationally but has yet to taken roots in the Radiant Garden area.

With a shrug to myself, I continued my way to my home away from home and was immediately faced with a rather peculiar scene.

"What took you so long?" asked Sora exasperatedly upon seeing me entering the room that afternoon.

"Bumped into Hayner," I lied.

Sora's lips thinned and he narrowed his eyes suspiciously. And for a moment there, I sincerely thought that he was going to blurt out "Liar". But I guess he didn't find anything wrong with my expression and so didn't actually accuse me of lying about bumping into Hayner on my way to the clubroom.

Instead, he thrust a rather familiar looking poster into my face, causing me to take a step back unless I planned on giving myself away as the person who left the poster here.

"Did you see this?" he asked me. I blinked a couple of times, pretending to be in deep thought for dramatic effect before I answered.

"No."

"Liar." This time he actually called me a liar… What the hell!?

"What?"

"This poster's been circulating throughout the city. Are you legally blind!?"

I scoffed. "Just because I might've passed by it, that doesn't mean I've actually looked at it enough to remember it," I retorted, crossing my arms in annoyance. To be quite honest, I was rather surprised that Sora didn't blow up on me after that.

"Then how the hell did it end up here!?" he exclaimed with a frown.

"Maybe we have a ghost haunting this room," I suggested offhandedly.

"That's impossible!" Sora all but shouted those words out. I jumped slightly and watched as Sora began his tirade. "There's nothing in this room that would suggest that a ghost lives here. There's no report of anyone committing suicide here; not to mention this isn't some place I'd jump off from—the roof is much better for that."

Oy, oy. This is on the third floor, you know. And how would you define these "signs" of a ghost anyways!?

As Sora continued on with his rant about haunts and ghostbusting, I breathed a sigh of resignation before sitting down in my chair, placing my chin on my hand in annoyance. Across from me, Riku smiled passively.

After another three minutes, Sora finally finished his rant and was huffing and puffing. It made me wonder if he had breathed at all during that spiel of his.

"Speaking of haunts," said Riku once Sora had recovered and was looking at the poster again. "I heard that there's an unsolved mystery in Twilight Town."

"Mystery?" asked Sora, raising an eyebrow. I was equally, if not even more so, skeptical of this.

The silver-haired psychic nodded. "The old unoccupied mansion has been locked up for years, but reports of a girl living in there have been popping up over the years. Every investigator of the mansion says that the mansion has been abandoned and there was no sign of anyone living within its halls."

Sora gave a scoff and waved dismissively. "Probably just the wind blowing the curtains about."

I gaped at the SOS Brigade leader. What the hell? Here's a boy who believes in the supernatural and would jump at any possibility of abnormal investigations is giving a rational, albeit highly unbelievable explanation, for this!? Sometimes I don't think I know Sora at all.

"That doesn't explain why the doors open randomly or the lights turning on during the night," said Riku. "Not to mention the fact that all these reports stated that these random events occurred only on All Hollow's Eve." Sora still didn't seem particularly interested by these words.

"I think it's worth investigating," said Naminé out of the blue. All eyes turned to her but she simply kept reading.

"You think so, Naminé?" asked Sora. The blond-haired alien interface lifted her head and, with a solemn look upon her face, nodded.

Sora then hummed in thought before nodding firmly. "Right, we'll solve this mystery once and for all!" he asserted as he pumped his fist in the air in a gesture of triumph.

Man, I hope your deductions this time aren't like the last time when we had a mystery on our hands…

As soon as Sora had made the decision, a knock on the door caught our attention. Denzel, who sat the closest to the door, opened it but no one was there. He leaned out and looked left and right before scratching his head.

"There's no one there," he said with a frown.

Sora gave a growl of annoyance. "If I find whoever's playing a prank-"

"Look!" exclaimed Kairi as she pointed at Denzel's feet. "What's that?"

"Huh?" Denzel blinked in confusion before turning around and found an unmarked envelop on the ground.

"Let me see that," said Sora as he snatched the letter out of Denzel's hands.

"The answer you seek lies in All Hollow's eve," he read aloud. His eyes and ears perked up and a wide grin appeared on his face.

"This is the break we're looking for!" he shouted cheerfully. "We obviously have to go there on All Hollow's Eve!"

I frowned at the thought of that, remembering my duties at home this year.

"I can't go," I said. "I have to hand out candy that night. Parents' orders."

"I'll just have to persuade them into letting you go then," he said simply. "After all, my Holmes investigation can't possibly function without my Watson assistance." With that, he snickered to himself.

I wonder if that was meant to be a really badly made pun…

Soon after, I got a call from my mom asking me to go to the marketplace to make some grocery purchases before I went home. And thus, I bid adieu to the clubroom early and hurried over to the marketplace.

Little did I know that something big was going to happen at my house.

* * *

"I'm home!" I shouted as I entered the house carrying four plastic bags of vegetables, milk, and various other things my mom told me to buy.

"Welcome home!" came my mom's voice. "You have a visitor by the way."

I blinked. "Visitor?" I stepped into the living room and gaped at the sight, dropping the bags of groceries in shock.

"How did you know where I live!?" I pointed an accusatory finger at the teen who sat on the couch eating a freshly baked oatmeal cookie.

"Denzel told me," he replied. "What's wrong with you, aren't you happy to see me?"

I bit down a groan of frustration before grumbling silently to myself and picking up the dropped bags. Thankfully, my mother entered the room to prevent this rather awkward meeting from getting any worse.

"Thanks for getting the groceries," Mom smiled. She then placed a tray with cups of milk onto the table for the guest and herself. "Just leave them on the kitchen counter and come join us."

I nodded silently and went to unload my baggage in the kitchen. Breathing a sigh of resignation, I pulled out another empty glass and opened up the new carton of milk for myself. I might as well have some cookies while I'm at it.

When I returned to the living room, I was rather surprised to see my mom getting along really well with the guest. They were laughing about who-knows-what when I walked in.

"You guys are doing an All Hollow's Eve project?" Mom asked me. I blinked slightly and looked over to the visitor, who nodded secretively, reminding me of the entire investigation thing that we were going to do.

"Oh, yeah…" I said with a dramatic sigh.

"I'll let you go only if you're not going to eat any candy," she said brightly with a latent threat for me.

"He's not going to eat any candy, Mrs. Uchiyama," our guest said with a smile. "I'll make sure of it."

"All right, then you can go," she replied.

"Thank you, Mrs. Uchiyama."

"Would you like to stay for dinner?" my mom asked, much to my horror.

"I'd love to."

I could only secretly groan in frustration at this. There goes my plan for a quiet evening at home watching my favorite show.

* * *

The next day after classes, I glared vehemently at Denzel. But, since Sora was in the room, I couldn't outright yell at him. I guess he knew it too, because the entire time Sora was there, he just grinned at me like Axel and Demyx do when they're deliberately annoying me.

Today, Sora had a white bandanna with the Chinese characters "Add fuel" on it. When I inquired about what it meant, he just shrugged me off and continued staring at the catalog of costumes that Kairi had been looking at near the beginning of the school year.

"Ah ha!" he exclaimed, coming to a decision about whatever it was he was thinking about. "I've got it!"

"What now?" I asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

"This!" he replied cheerily, pointing at a picture. I blinked a few times as I stared at the photo. It was a group picture of six people dressed up as strangely familiar characters.

"You want us dressed up as them!?" I exclaimed. Sora cackled and nodded vigorously. I could only gape at him.

The others, minus the reading Naminé, all leaned forward to look at the picture while I scanned at the prices.

A whopping 6000 Munny for the entire ensemble. That's practically 90 of the entire funds the council has allotted to the Literature Club!

Sora's decision to dress us up yet again makes me cringe and banished all of my angry thoughts against Denzel. I could only wonder who Sora was going to dress me up as.

And to satisfy your curiosity as to which characters Sora decided to make us cosplay as, it's this:

Sora – Mario

Naminé – Watts

Kairi – Princess Peach

Riku – Kooper

Denzel – Toad

Me – Luigi

That's right, he decided to dress us all up as characters from Paper Mario. Just… great.

"How the hell do you expect us to investigate dressed like this?" I asked as I pointed to the picture.

"Easy," he replied. "Just go in like that and come back out once we're done." The smile that was on his face had disappeared.

"You know what I mean," I retorted, slightly annoyed that Sora seemed to be missing the most practical aspect of investigating.

"Elaborate," he replied. A frown was on his face now. Oh, great.

"I doubt the place will be a cakewalk. What if we had to get out fast? Kairi would have trouble in that skirt!" I would've added "ridiculous" in front of "skirt", but somehow I doubt that would be conducive to my cause. Sora probably would've just scoffed at me and said that I wanted to see Kairi in a more appealing outfit.

More like, _you_ would've wanted that, wouldn't you? After all, you were the one who recruited her to be the club mascot!

He huffed petulantly before flipping through the pages again.

"Why do you want us to get dressed up anyway?" I decided to ask.

"It's All Hollow's Eve!" he replied. "It's a requirement to dress up for the night."

Oh really now… As I recall, you weren't dressed up on that fateful night four years ago.

Soon, he found another set of costumes and set the picture in front of me. Although the prices were just as exorbitant as the last one, at least the costumes themselves allow for actual movement than before.

"Fine," I said upon seeing the picture. Better to appease Sora now than begin the potential downfall of humanity.

Sora grinned, snickered, and then delegated our roles:

Sora – Naruto

Naminé – Hinata

Kairi – Sakura

Riku – Yamato/Takeshi

Denzel – Sai

Me – Sasuke

God damn it. Why do I have to be the one with a freaking purple bow on my back!? Why couldn't I be Gaara or Shikamaru? Have I not been clear with my sexual preference or something?

Sigh. It's no use griping about it. Might as well go with the flow…

* * *

That following week was absolutely torture for me as we waited for the costumes to arrive. Every single day, I couldn't help but picture myself in that god awful costume that Sora had picked for me. I just hope it wouldn't be really chilly that day in Twilight Town. Pray for me!

During the weekend before All Hollow's Eve—All Hollow's Eve being on a Friday and all—the costume finally came and Sora made us all gather without warning in front of the Radiant Garden Convention Center.

Of course, I was the one who lived farthest away from the convention center, which meant that when Sora had notified me of our impromptu meeting, I would be the last one to get to the meeting place.

Which meant…

Treating everyone to whichever restaurant or café we ended up at.

While we sat in our seats savoring our drinks, Sora pulled out several suit bags from his luggage case. They were, of course, our costumes. I fought the urge to bawl like a little kid, but I seriously wanted to do that. I don't want to be Sasuke!

In any case, we went over to Naminé's apartment to—as Sora aptly put it—try out the costumes we got.

Psh, yeah right. I'll bet it's just another one of your schemes to put more photos on that awful website of ours.

Upon reaching there, Sora immediately went to the bathroom to get changed first. From what I remembered in the picture, Sora was going to be wearing an orange jumpsuit with a blue headband and wild blond spikes…

Why couldn't I be the one to wear that? I already have the hair!

Anyways, since I couldn't imagine Sora actually wearing such a thing, I just had to wait for him to get out of the bathroom.

And to my surprise, he looked quite good. The blond wig's a bit strange, but otherwise, he looks like he could pass off like a bona fide ninja from Konoha Village.

Next went Kairi with a smile. I wonder if it's in her nature to cosplay or did she just get used to it. Sora just grinned as he sat in one of the white chairs in Naminé's living room, eagerly waiting for the rest of us to get changed. Oh, how I dread the time when it's my turn.

Like Sora, Kairi didn't look half bad in her costume. Sure, it wasn't much different from what she usually wears—a white tank top underneath a pink vest, a pink miniskirt, and pink and black shoes—but I supposed the costume was much simpler than her usual outfit. A red headband and a pair of black gloves completed her ensemble. Surprisingly, she looked rather fierce in that outfit. I wouldn't mess with her if she wore that outfit every single day.

In quick succession, Naminé, Riku, and Denzel all got changed without complaints and thus we have five ninjas sitting around in Naminé's living room. I wonder what Yuffie would've thought if she were here. Would she have kicked our butts for mocking her heritage?

I don't want to know.

Finally, it was my turn. And I entered the bathroom with dread and a scowl on my face. Before I went in, I glared at Sora.

"If any one of you laughs at me for this ridiculous costume, I'm getting my own costume."

Sora simply grinned.

To make a long story short, I quickly got changed, seeing how the faster I got changed, the faster I would be able to get out of the ridiculous outfit. After I had put on everything else, only the cursed bow sat alone within the costume bag. I glared at it and willed it to disappear, since if it did, I wouldn't have to wear it and Sora probably would've called the costume company back and demand a refund. But of course, wishes never come true for me and with a sigh of annoyance, I put the bow on around my waist and looked myself in the mirror.

I hate my life.

When I stepped out, Sora's only words were: "Awesome! I've got my rival! Believe it yo!"

What…the crap.

* * *

Skipping ahead to that fateful night!

After class, we assembled in the clubroom and got changed before heading over to the Central Station at Radiant Garden and taking the train over to Twilight Town. On the way, I was slightly surprised and annoyed by the multitude of girls that wanted to take pictures with me.

Cursed fangirls. Argh!

I will say that getting harassed every five seconds by a squealing teenager worse than Marlene is very, _very_ aggravating. There were plenty of times where I had wished that this sword that was sheathed on my hip was an actual sword and not just a prop. I'd stab it through people if it only meant peace of mind.

At long last, we arrived at Twilight Town and proceeded straight to the Old Forest. A skip and a hop later, we stood in front of the vine-covered gate of the Old Mansion. Nothing stirred within; and underneath the darkening sky, I could only wonder how my own wits were.

"It's quiet," whispered Denzel. "Too quiet."

What, are you roleplaying as your character now, Denzel? Seriously.

Sora flipped on a flashlight that he had brought with him and scrutinized the gate in front of us. Without another word, he pulled at the gate, which gave way with an echoing squeak. Crows cawed in the distance and the sound of birds flapping away only served to contribute to the entire eeriness of this place.

"I have a bad feeling about this," whispered Riku to me.

I scoffed at him. "Don't tell me you're scared, Riku," I eyed him with slight disbelief.

"You know what I mean," he retorted.  
He was right though. I had an uneasy feeling about this place. And as we passed through the now open gate, the feeling only intensified.

Leading our small party, Sora looked left and right in front of him at the front lawn leading to the mansion. Broken pillars sat forlornly about and moss thrived upon the fallen stone. I wondered what had caused the pillars to crumble like that. This mansion couldn't possibly be _that_ old, could it?

We soon stood in front of the two wooden front doors of the mansion. Compared to the broken pillars, the wooden doors seemed as new as ever. What the hell?

Sora visibly gulped and reached out to the brass doorknob. He took a deep breath and twisted the knob. Lo and behold, the door was unlocked! I have a bad feeling about this!

Sora hummed and stepped into the dark foyer, following closely by Naminé and Denzel. The rest of us looked and smiled encouraging at one another before Kairi and Riku too entered the old mansion, leaving me outside to ponder my "fate".

I exhaled with resignation and entered the mansion as well.

Within, you could smell the dust and the mold of the mansion; it was rather disgusting. I joined the others at the center of the room where a fallen chandelier sat on the ground.

Now, I supposed that if this mansion was anything like the haunted mansion, I surmise that we should've heard a creepy laughter or deep voice welcoming us. But nothing of the sort greeted us. Instead, the door that I had left open suddenly slammed shut behind us, drawing our attentions to it.

I went over to the door to open it back up, only to find that the knob wouldn't twist. I tried the other knob; and no luck either. Pulling on the door did nothing as well.

"What happened?" asked Sora with a hint of worry in his voice.

"The door won't open," I replied.

"What!? That's absurd!" he retorted with a scowl before trying the doors himself. Like me, he had no luck either.

"We're trapped."

* * *

_Disclaimer: _Kingdom Hearts _and_ Haruhi Suzumiya_ do not belong to me. This piece of work is purely fictional and free to readers. That doesn't give anyone the right to post this on a separate website without my permission though._

_A/N: YAY! Finally done with another chapter of _Intrigues_. My sincere apologies for taking such a long time to update to you all, thanks for bearing with me. In any case, from the title of this chapter, there is a second part to this, which will be talking about what happens to them in the old mansion. I hope to get it out as soon as possible. (prays)_

_As for this chapter, I know I had originally said that it was unlikely that Sora would make them dress up again, but seeing how it was Halloween themed, I just had to make them dress up again, XP. It was fun to go through the various series that I had in mind and draw parallels for them, namely _Rurouni Kenshin, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy XII, _and the two that I had stated in the chapter. I ended up with _Naruto: Shippuuden_ mainly because I couldn't find good parallels with the other series… well, maybe Final Fantasy XII. But I've already included Ashe in one of the chapters, so I couldn't do FFXII. Nor could I do FFVII, FFVIII, and FFX for the same exact reasons, haha._

_Just a note, I changed the genre of this fic from drama to humor mainly because I felt there was more humor than drama with Roxas's commentary about his life, haha._

_Anyways! That's enough rambling from me. Hope you enjoyed the chapter and look forward to the next chapter!_


	5. All Hollow's Eve, Part 2

_To reviewers of Chapter 4:_

_dark-ranmaru: Well, the old mansion's always struck me as a sort of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion sort of place, haha. I'm glad you liked Roxas's commentary, it always makes the story that much more humorous I think._

_fei8000000: Granted, I can't really see Roxas as Shikamaru even if he did wear a wig. Not that he looks more like Sasuke… meh. And I could totally see your point about liking a story but not knowing why. I'm guilty of that plenty of times, hehe._

_Vampire Ifurita: Sorry for the wait, hope you like this part just as well. Sora's world is rather amusing isn't it?_

_Hero Of The Hazard: You'd just have to see, don't you. XP_

_LupinandHarry: The original as in _The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya_? If that's the case, then I'm glad that I'm doing exactly what I had hoped to do when I set out to write this, hehe._

_Kazakun08: Thanks for the compliment. Unfortunately, I couldn't have gotten this part out any sooner than I had hoped too. Hope it was well worth the wait._

**

* * *

Chapter 5 – All Hollow's Eve, Part 2**

* * *

Just in case you forgot what just had happened…

Here's a recap!

* * *

Leading our small party, Sora looked left and right in front of him at the front lawn leading to the mansion. Broken pillars sat forlornly about and moss thrived upon the fallen stone. I wondered what had caused the pillars to crumble like that. This mansion couldn't possibly be _that_ old, could it?

We soon stood in front of the two wooden front doors of the mansion. Compared to the broken pillars, the wooden doors seemed as new as ever. What the hell?

Sora visibly gulped and reached out to the brass doorknob. He took a deep breath and twisted the knob. Lo and behold, the door was unlocked! I have a bad feeling about this!

Sora hummed and stepped into the dark foyer, followed closely by Naminé and Denzel. The rest of us looked and smiled encouraging at one another before Kairi and Riku too entered the old mansion, leaving me outside to ponder my "fate".

I exhaled with resignation and entered the mansion as well.

Within, you could smell the dust and the mold of the mansion; it was rather disgusting. I joined the others at the center of the room where a fallen chandelier sat on the ground.

Now, I supposed that if this mansion was anything like the haunted mansion, I surmise that we should've heard a creepy laughter or deep voice welcoming us. But nothing of the sort greeted us. Instead, the door that I had left open suddenly slammed shut behind us, drawing our attentions to it.

I went over to the door to open it back up, only to find that the knob wouldn't twist. I tried the other knob; and no luck either. Pulling on the door did nothing as well.

"What happened?" asked Sora with a hint of worry in his voice.

"The door won't open," I replied.

"What!? That's absurd!" he retorted with a scowl before trying the doors himself. Like me, he had no luck either.

"We're trapped."

* * *

When the news that we were trapped in the mansion was acknowledged by everyone, I looked around to observe their reactions. A frown was on Riku's face—that can't mean anything good. Naminé looked as passive as ever, but she didn't seem amused by the fact that we're now trapped in this old, dusty, and in general creepy house. Denzel had latched onto one of Kairi's arm with a squeak; either he's a really good actor or he's a genuine scaredy cat.

Great, you've been to all these different dimensions and now you're scared of this place? I'm sure there are scarier things that you've already encountered!

Kairi seemed worried by the turn of events since she was biting on her nails now. It was a habit that I noticed last year.

Sora gave the doors another shake before sighing exasperatedly and turned around, waving his flashlight around like some strobe light. The movement was so fast that my poor brain was struggling to keep up. I gave up on trying to figure out what Sora's trying to find out and instead, began my own "research" on the first floor.

Without waiting for our intrepid leader to step into the mansion beyond the safe place—as I deemed it—near the front doors, I approached a wooden door off to the left with two rusting armor suits standing guard on its two sides. The doorknob was an unhealthy brown color, making me hesitant about opening said door to see what was beyond.

Luckily for me, Sora had no such qualms about getting his hands dirty that fast. Maybe he thought that there was water here. He reached for the door knob and twisted it open, pushing the door into an even darker place than the foyer that we were standing in.

He shone his flashlight into the room and saw the shadow of a grand piano sitting in solitude within the dusty room. Cobwebs decorated the room in a grotesque fashion while spiders simply sat stilly upon their webs, waiting for a small disturbance before they lunged out to their meals.

Based on the fact that there was a piano within the room, this quarter must have been the music room back in the day when the mansion was occupied. However, the only furniture within the room was the piano, which also meant that the only instrument in the room was the piano. And based on the movies and such, you would think that there'd be more than one instrument, right?

After seeing nothing else within the room besides a set of windows that were much too high and too small to leave the mansion through, Sora went over to the piano and looked down at the dusty keys. Without inspecting the interior of the piano, he hit one of the keys.

The second indication that the house was unnatural was the way the sound traveled through the room. For a small room, the sound seemed to echo like we were in a grand auditorium, rather than this dusty, small room. Not to mention, the sound was rather odd.

"It's flat," commented Naminé.

Of course, being the perfect human being sans the emotions, Naminé would obviously have the trait of having perfect pitch. But that trait does not help us here! Thank you for that piece of useless information!

Sora then decided to hit another key and Naminé commented that it was sharp this time.

While it's slightly amusing to hear Naminé comment on the pitch of the sound that was being played, you can't possibly think that the piano would remain in tune for who-knows-how-long it's been here.

As Sora got ready to play yet another note, I couldn't help but wonder what Naminé was going to say about this note. Would it be flat? Sharp? Or just right?

I watched with anticipation at the playing of the next note. Time seemed to have slowed to a crawl and I gulped with fright, as if I knew what was about to happen next.

Instead of a clear tone that we expected, the third tone that Sora played began with a "crunch" and then a dampened tone. A brief moment of silence froze the room before the pattering sound of hundred of tiny feet met our ears. We watched with surprise as thousands of insects began pouring out of the old grand piano in droves. I don't know who was the first of us to react, but everyone of us ended up screaming like little girls at the sight—well, expect for Naminé of course—before we rushed out of the room in a panic. Our flashlights shook in our hands as we ran out into the foyer and directly to the opposite wall.

Surprisingly, when our flashlights returned to the open doorway toward the creepy piano, no bugs had followed us into the foyer. It was as if they were bound to that room or something.

We all panted with exertion, our hearts racing with fright. No one said a word, even when the door to the bug room had inexplicably closed on its own.

"What… the hell was that?" gasped Sora in between breaths a minute later. "What is wrong with this place? If this was a fun house, it's not very fun!"

No one had an answer or a comment for him. All of us were still much too startled by the unexpected physics anomaly from the previous room; not to mention the fact that we still didn't exactly know what the hell was going on here anyways.

Once we had all calmed down, Denzel immediately went over to the front doors and tried them. Unfortunately, the act was futile; the doors were still locked. He tried to force it open by ramming it with his shoulder, only to end up hurt.

"Ow…" he practically whined as he rubbed tenderly at his bruised shoulder.

Honestly, out of the five of us besides Sora, I would have to say that Denzel does the stupidest thing ever.

Or maybe he's just trying to keep Sora from doing the same things that he would be doing. Why in the name am I justifying his actions anyways?

In any case, after Sora saw Denzel's futile attempt to open the front doors, he turned around to evaluate the door behind us. Unlike the previous one, the two armors that used to "guard" the door had crumpled onto the ground and they were completely dusty and rusted over. It was as if the armors were the complete opposites. The door itself was the same as the other and bore no clue as to where it would take us.

You could barely hear the shaking of the door knob as Sora's hand laid upon it. There was no doubt that he was scared, which unsettled me slightly; after all, Sora has always been the brave one.

For a few seconds, Sora just stood there with his flashlight pointed downward, his other hand sitting on the doorknob as if in indecision. Finally, he gave a soft snort that sounded like a "heh" and took a deep breath, probably trying to muster up the courage to open the door. He stood up taller with a grin before opening the door.

The room was slightly larger than the previous one that they were in. In the center of the floor was a small chandelier that had crashed onto the ground. Broken crystal dotted the floor and a small crater became the focal point of the room that was once lit by the chandelier. A rotted upholstered chair sat in one corner while a blue painted trunk sat in the other.

Sora made his way over to the strange box while I shone my flashlight upward, finding the crack in the ceiling where the said chandelier once hung from. I approached the crater for a better look at the hole above, the sound of crunching crystals beneath my shoes. A rather loud "thud" grabbed the rest of our attention as we looked over to where Sora and Riku stood. The blue trunk was opened and within was a stack of yellowing cloth.

"Tablecloth?" inquired Kairi as she stepped closer to it.

"Or something," said Sora, pulling the cloth out of the trunk. Underneath was a stack of what appeared to be plates wrapped up in newspaper. However, when I took one from that trunk, it didn't feel like any newspaper I've ever handled.

"Feels like magazine paper," commented Denzel, taking another plate from the chest.

Magazine paper? That kind of media hasn't appeared until thirty years ago; this place has _got_ to be older than _that_.

I handed my flashlight over to Naminé, who had simply stood silent next to me. She shone the flashlight toward the object as I unwrapped it.

"Looks like handmade," said Riku, peering over my shoulder. I shot him a glance; since when has he been an expert at this?

"The surface of the plate's not perfectly flat," he pointed out, "and the glaze is too much for the piece." I continued to stare at him. "My family collects plates as art," he explained at last. I was tempted to not believe him.

"I will have to say though," he continued as he scrutinized the plate that was in my hand, "the ceramic paint that's used is rather unusual."

"Let me see," said Sora, all but ripping the plate out of my hands. Oh what, so you're an art expert now too?

He took a close look with his flashlight. It was so white and bright that I wondered how he could've seen the red pant that's on it.

"Blood," said Naminé simply. Kairi yelped and dropped the plate that she had been holding. The heavy porcelain hit the hard floor and the sound of breaking plate echoed through the room and out into the foyer.

"Kairi," I hissed with slight annoyance.

"Sorry," murmured the girl abashed, her head hung down.

"The red paint is blood," said Naminé again. "There is no question about it."

I swallowed down hard and set the plate that I had been holding back into the trunk, wiping my hands in the process, slightly perturbed by the thing that I had just held.

"What kind of an insane artist would use blood as a medium?" asked Denzel. God, man, you really have no tact do you.

"Someone who is extremely gifted," said Sora, lifting his head with a wide grin. The sparkle in his eyes scares me. "Someone immerses himself in his work deeply. We might be onto something here," he said excitedly. He set the plate down and began his way out of the room, obviously eager to continue his search for more clues.

By the time I had exited the room, opting to just let things sit rather than put everything back into the trunk neatly, Sora was already taking two steps at a time up to the second floor. It would seem that the incident with all the bugs and such had been completely banished from his mind. All he wants to do was to find out more about the mysterious artist who had painted his—or her—plates with blood. To be honest, I'm kind of curious myself.

Upon reaching the second floor, I could see that there were four doors—two double doors, two single doors. It looked as it was symmetrically designed. While obviously the two double doors lead to larger rooms, I had no idea where the single doors led to. They could lead to bedrooms, the kitchen, bathroom, closet, laundry room—anywhere that a door in a normal house would lead to. Then again, this isn't a normal house, now is it?

Since there were no signs hinting as to the rooms that each of the doors led to, Sora decided to check out the closest one: a single door on our left hand side. He pushed open the door and to our surprise and relief, the room was a simple bedroom. Granted, cobwebs were strewn all over the place and the bed was impossible to sleep on; some of the springs had broken out of their configurations and tore through the layers of foam and cloth over them and one side of bed frame itself had snapped, leaving the decrepit mattress slanted towards the ground. Still, the fact that there was someone who once lived like the rest of us comforted our minds.

As I stepped into the room after Denzel, who was still clinging to Kairi as if she was his lifeline, I couldn't help but shiver. Somehow a bitter cold breeze had swept across the landing behind me. I turned to look if my mind was playing tricks on me and found the doorway void of any person.

"Naminé?" I called out, stepping back out onto the landing. I looked all over the foyer and couldn't find a trace of the self-proclaimed alien.

"Wasn't she with you?" asked Sora with a frown.

"I thought she was right behind me," I replied.

"Did the ghosts get her?" whimpered Denzel. I resisted the urge to knock some sense into the younger man or shaking him senseless while shouting "there's no such thing as ghosts" at him. First, that would've made me sound hysterical; second, Sora would have frowned at me and made me do more work for even making such a statement.

Not to mention the fact that I didn't have an explanation for Naminé's sudden disappearance without revealing her actual identity as an alien rather than an ordinary high school student like me.

So, instead of responding to Denzel's question, I turned to scan the foyer once again, frowning as my search came up fruitless. I looked back into the room where the others were and found that Sora seemed to be unconcerned by Naminé's sudden disappearance.

"Aren't you going to look for Naminé?" I asked, watching Sora scrutinize the bed frame closely.

"What for? She'll show up again whenever the bad guys want her to," he said simply. Uh, what?

"Huh?" I uttered thoughtlessly. Sora heaved a sigh of annoyance and straightened up to face me.

"We're in a 'haunted' mansion, idiot," he almost shouted at me, his fingers gesturing the quotation marks as he said "haunted". "Since Naminé disappeared, it's obvious that someone else is here and doesn't want us to solve the mystery behind this place. This place is obviously some hide out for counterfeiters."

Now that's wishing too much, Sora. This isn't like one of the episodes on Scooby Doo, you know. This is real life!

"How do you know that?" I decided to pose the question.

"How else do you explain it!?" he yelled back.

To that, I had no answer. Sora huffed with exasperation and bent down again to look at the etchings on the bed frame. He seems very interested in the details for some unknown reason.

Uncertain what to look for, I simply looked around the bedroom aimlessly. It wasn't until I had looked about me several rounds to realize that this room was indeed strange.

"There's no bathroom," Riku said with a grin.

"No windows either," added Kairi.

"Looks like a prison cell," I commented. The other four looked at me like I had sprouted another head again. "You know, like the ones that you read in those cheesy stories, where the bad guy locks the good guy or some hostage up in a room?" Now I'm starting to sound like Sora.

"That's absurd!" Sora exclaimed. "Such a room would only exist underground, not on the second floor! Don't you ever think?"

"Maybe it's not a bad guy-good guy situation but family members locking up other family members," I muttered in the end, slightly rebuffed by Sora's insinuations. At that, Sora stood back up and crossed his arms as if he was angry at me. And so I braced myself for another tirade from the eccentric teen. However, instead of an angry rant, he had simply hummed in thought.

"You know, you might be onto something here," he said. "That's probably why the artist ended up painting their pottery in blood, because they couldn't leave the house!"

While Sora's theory did intrigue me, that didn't quite add up. After all, if that was the case, why was there no potter's wheel in the bedroom that we're in? As I recall, a potter's wheel is quite heavy. So for now I'll not agree with the man.

Having found absolutely nothing in the room, we made our way over to the double doors next to the bedroom. This time, Riku and I took the initiative to open the door. Denzel was still clinging to Kairi like a scared little girl while Sora was obviously eager to find a hidden passageway of some sort.

Interestingly, the room next to the strange bedroom was a personal library with bookshelves that lined the walls from floor to ceiling. A chandelier hung over a large wooden table in the middle of the room and a white symbol was drawn at one end of the table.

While I had kept an eye on Riku as I stepped into the room, semi-hoping that he wouldn't disappear like Naminé, I couldn't help but marvel at the room. The library looked like it was two stories tall and had a ladder on wheels hanging from a rail that went around the room. In the center of the wall next to the door, there was a giant portrait of a creepy looking lady whose eyes seemed to follow you wherever you went within the room.

"Where's Riku?" asked Kairi. I looked immediately to the last place I had seen the silver-haired teen at and found no one there.

"Oh great," I muttered angrily. I don't need everyone to be disappearing on me right now! Especially not Naminé and Riku, since they're the only two who can possibly break us out of here. Well, maybe just Naminé. Riku can rot in hell for having suggested for us to come to this wretched place.

Sora seemed resigned to the fact that we were all going to disappear until we figure out this mystery and heaved a sigh. He turned back to the books and dusted some of them off to look at the titles.

As for me, I refused to acknowledge the fact that we're stuck in a scripted event where every single one of us is going to disappear, leaving behind one or two "survivors" to solve the mystery and leave the mansion alive and well, and perhaps, if the story is a happy one, with the rest of us all safe and sound as well. Because of my rebellious nature at that moment, I decided to stomp my way back toward the doors that we had just gone through.

"If you're going to go look for them, take Denzel with you," said Sora before I even took a step out. "That way neither one of you will disappear." I don't know whether he said that to comfort me or to spite me, but at that moment, I was just simply extremely angry with our situation.

I pressed my lips together and gritted my teeth with latent anger. With a frustrated exhale, I acted like a vengeful father about to abuse his son and grabbed a hold of Denzel's wrist, pulling him away from Kairi. The freshman gave a whine like a pup that'd just been pulled away from his mother and was almost near tears when I finally let go of him on the first floor of the foyer.

I couldn't hold onto my frustrations upon seeing that face and quickly muttered an apology shamefully, resisting the urge to smack my own head right there and then.

"You can cling onto me if you'd like," I murmured.

"No thanks," he quickly replied. "That'd be awkward."

"Uh, what?" was my immediate response. Wasn't he all scared of this place just now?

"I said that me," he pointed to himself, "clinging onto you," he pointed at me now, "would be awkward."

"How so?"

"We're both guys, duh!" He said that as if it was the most obviously thing ever.

"And you're fine clinging onto Kairi?" I questioned him, my right eyebrow getting higher and higher on my face.

"I like Kairi. Besides, clinging onto her let's me get closer to her boobs," he grinned.

That time, I smacked my forehead loudly. "Great, I have a hormone-raging teenager with me."

He scoffed. "Speak for yourself, you're only one year older than me," he retorted.

"You know that Kairi's not going to get involved with you, right?" I said.

"Doesn't mean I can't try." I rolled my eyes at him before taking one step towards him and smacking the back of his head.

"Ow. He said rubbed at where I had hit him tenderly. "What's that for?" he whined.

"This isn't the place to be such a pervert," I said. "Also, Riku'll probably whoop your ass if he hears this. He's rather protective of Kairi, you know."

"Like you're not?" he retorted.

"Denzel," I said warningly.

"Oh, fine," he exclaimed exasperatedly. I had to hide my snicker. He was acting more like his sister as each day goes by.

"C'mon, let's go look for Riku and Naminé."

"Yeah, yeah."

Together, the two of us went through the two rooms on the first floor and the bedroom that we had previously "explored" on the second floor.

"Find anything?" came Sora's voice as he and Kairi's came out of the library just as we were about to search through the two rooms on the opposite end of the mansion that we hadn't looked through before.

"Nope," Denzel replied immediately before opening the single door into a black room. I gave Sora a shrug as the younger boy stepped into the room.

"We were hoping that one of these other two rooms would yield some clues," I explained. "How about on your end?"

"Nothing," replied Sora.

Suddenly, the door to the room that Denzel had been stepped into closed.

"Denzel!" shouted Kairi. My eyes widened with shock and I quickly reopened the door and peered in.

Denzel had vanished into thin air.

"Dammit!" I exclaimed angrily. "There's got to be a trapdoor around here." My flashlight swept across the floor rapidly as I sought for anything that might lead me to a trapdoor; there was none. Sora and Kairi quickly joined me in my exploration of the room and they too, could not find anything. The entire room was bare and seamless.

"How could he have disappeared?" I wondered aloud, but none of us had an answer.

Sora sighed once again, which worried me slightly. If he was getting sad, and more Closed Spaces pop up, what will the Organization do without Riku?

"Let's go look at the last room," suggested Kairi quietly. It was as if she was acknowledging the fact that she would be the next one to disappear. And from my experiences with Sora and me being his chosen one, somehow, I didn't doubt it either.

So when Kairi disappeared right after we had entered the last room, neither Sora nor I was surprised. We went about our search mechanically yet full of fear. Would either one of us disappear next? Or was this all a giant prank being played on us and everything would be fine? We were both worried, both anxious, and both had tons of questions with no answers.

It wasn't until I had circled around the room for the third or fourth time looking for something that wasn't there when I realized the familiarity of the room.

Although the colors were different, the room looked strangely like Naminé's living room.

"Don't you think this looks like Naminé's living room?" asked Sora just as I came to the realization.

"Yeah," I replied. While Naminé's living room was completely in white, this room was completely in a shade of brown. It could've been the juxtaposed room that Naminé was searching for if she were an interior designer planning on making her apartment look like a work of art.

I shone my flashlight onto the wooden table in the room and noticed an etching at the end of the table. I quickly dusted the symbol to look at it closely.

"A symbol?" asked Sora, looking at the same thing that I was.

"Maybe," I replied, wondering what it meant.

"I think I know," said Sora.

"Huh?" Sora didn't answer me, but simply grabbed a hold of my wrist and dragged me back in the direction of the library.

"What the hell, Sora?" I muttered exasperatedly after he let me go once we were in the library. The teen didn't answer me in the usual fashion, only went straight to the table and grabbed the white crayon that was sitting there. I guess I never noticed that being there the first time I was in here.

He quickly sketched the symbol that we had found in the room that looked liked Naminé's living room in the circle and a bright light began shining from it. The ground around us shone in a blue square and I pulled Sora back just in time as the majority of the floor disappeared, leaving behind a rather narrow path at the side of the door and the portrait that lead to a set of stairs downward. We turned off our flashlight since blue light shone from the walls of the strange room beneath the library and illuminated the entire area.

Gingerly, we descended down into the room and noticed a doorway on the right side of the room as we came down the stairs. The hallway was dark, but at the end of the corridor, we could see dimmed light. Sora took a hold of my hand, his own clammy with sweat, and pulled me into the darkened hallway, where we carefully ventured through to the other side. Our footsteps echoed through the hall, and the sound was strangely metallic. It felt as if we were in one of those science fiction movies of the future, exploring an abandoned spaceship of some sort.

When we got to the end of the hallway, we could see what was glowing dimly. The room at the end was similar to the other room underneath the library, but the only sources of light for this room was the glow from what looked like computer monitors, a hollow tube with a white light shining up, and a plasma TV with the statistics of someone on it.

"A computer?" asked Sora, looking at the multi-paneled machine sitting in the corner. Lines of indecipherable sentences scrolled upward on the monitors at different speeds while the keyboard was split up into three sections. There was no CPU that I could see and definitely no mouse. I supposed that there wouldn't be any need for a mouse since I could see no cursor on the screens at all.

On the main screen, a line that looked like a command had been typed into the computer. Sora looked at me and I shrugged. I'm pretty sure neither one of us had any idea what that line meant. He reached for the enter key and with a gulp, pressed it down. Instantly a swooshing sound came from behind us and a doorway had opened up on the other side of the room to the left.

Once again, we made our way into the hallway, noticing that it was much more brightly illuminated than any other room that we had been in before. The walls were near white, the ground a dull metallic grey with lines of white shining through the cracks between the panels. Our clicking footsteps echoed through the hallway, bouncing off the metal with crystal clarity. The hall then turns towards our right and both of us stopped in curiosity at the sight.

Large pods that looked like lotus flower buds stood in silence towards the left at the end of the hallway, where another doorway stood. We approached the pods carefully, noticing tendrils of smoke or steam dissipating into the air from various parts of the strange apparatuses. As we got nearer, we could see the reason behind the "smoke".

"It's freezing cold," said Sora as he laid a hand on one of the pods. White frost dotted the surface and formed around Sora's gloved hand as he wiped at the glassy surface. We could see a faint shadow behind the frosted glass, but neither one of us had any idea what was in the pod. The pod itself was oddly seamless, providing us with no viable way to pry open the thing to see what was inside.

I knocked on the glass and noticed the dull sound that echoed back.

"That's some thick glass," I muttered. Sora simply nodded.

Both of us jumped back when we saw a sudden movement within the pod that I had just knocked on.

"What the hell?" asked Sora out loud as he tried to get a closer look at whatever it was that had moved in there. Unfortunately, both the thick glass and the frost had distorted and blurred the image so much that we couldn't see exactly what was in there. All we knew was that something alive was being held in these pods and we had no way of getting them out of there.

"What are these things?" I wondered.

"Cryogenic pods," said Sora after giving it some thought.

"What?" I quacked. "Those things aren't possible with the technology that we have."

"How else do you explain it? Clearly, some scientist is conducting his mad experiments here. That would explain the whole haunted mansion thing. He's put a lot of thought into his cover, don't you think?" reasoned Sora.

"But only on Halloween?" I was still skeptical of Sora's explanation.

"He probably started his experiment on Halloween and after all the rumors, decided to give them more credence by making the mansion haunted every Halloween."

"That's a long time to be keeping this up." I didn't know why I was trying to poke holes in Sora's reasoning, maybe my brain just thought that everything that Sora said is impossible.

"A dedicated scientist would do anything to keep his experiments going," replied Sora simply as he began his way toward the closed doorway near the pods.

"So no crazy artist eh?" He didn't reply, simply shrugging his shoulders as he continued on his way. Somehow, I don't think Sora quite believes in his own theory either.

As soon as Sora neared the blocked doorway, the metal door slid open with a "swoosh" like the other door before. Bright light assaulted our eyes as we gazed upon a pure white room with one single thing within. The soft hum of machinery met our ears and waving green light on the ground decorated the eerie room. At the center of the concentric circles marked by green was a larger version of the cryogenic pod that we had just seen in the hallway.

While Sora contemplated the presence of this larger lotus flower pod looking machine, I opted to examine the thing more closely. I rapped on the surface of the machine and noted the hollow metallic tone.

"Sounds hollow inside," I said, turning around to see Sora still standing still with his arms crossed in thought. He didn't reply to me and I gave the pod no second thought. I began my search through the white room, trying to find any clue as to a possible hidden passageway that might lead me to the others. Sora, on the other hand, continued to mull over the cryogenic pods most likely.

"I think I was wrong," said Sora after I was making my second round around the room looking for clues. I stopped in my search to consider him; after all, I wasn't having any luck in actually finding the said hidden passageway and somehow I doubted I was actually going to find it.

"About what?" I asked. I was getting rather chilly in this costume and this stupid bow was starting to make my back itch.

"It's not a mad scientist doing work. I think the entire family is in hibernation in those pods we saw. They were probably being persecuted for one of their family member's artwork and so they ended up having to hibernate until the future when they wouldn't be hounded for their eccentricities." At that, Sora nodded with approval at himself.

God, enough with the half-assed theories. In case you forgot, we're still missing our friends!

"Either your theory is false or whatever, the others are still missing," I pointed out drolly.

He immediately frowned at the mention of the missing others.

"I know that!" he exclaimed angrily. He then immediately stomped out of the room without making sure I followed. I sighed in resignation, slightly wondering why in the world I was still trying to make Sora think rationally and accept the real life when he's not like me at all.

"Oy, you!" his head poked back into the room. He does care! "Are you coming or not?"

"Of course," I replied, hiding my smile.

I followed Sora back out of the section of the mansion that looked like it came straight out from a science fiction book and we ended back on the first floor of the foyer. With resolve, the two of us returned to the creepy piano room and began our search for our friends anew.

Surprisingly, when we opened the piano, there were no creepy-crawlies. And even when Sora played each note, no mysterious appearance of the insects appeared.

"We weren't hallucinating, right?" asked Sora somewhat fearfully as we shut the piano.

"I don't think so," I replied simply.

We left the piano room and continued through the foyer, knocking on the walls as we went along. We listened carefully for any hollowed sounds from behind the walls that might indicate the presence of a hidden passageway or room, but we had no luck. Even as the night grew colder, we continued our search, combing through the rooms.

When we reached the library for the second time, both of us were shocked to see the library back in its previous state before Sora drew the symbol on the table. The white crayon was back on the table and everything looked undisturbed. We had both rubbed our tired eyes to make sure that we weren't seeing things, but sure enough, everything had returned to its original state.

We must've looked rather silly when we turned to look at each other simultaneously and shrugging at each other. While Sora opted to stay in the library and go through each book, I continued my search through the mansion.

Although I had sincerely desired to find the others somehow, my energy dwindled. The adrenaline rush from earlier had all, but faded away, leaving me with little stamina. I moved from one room to another mechanically, paying little attention to the same sound that replied with each knock. The knuckles on my hands were near raw from all the knocking I did and my eyes struggled to keep open. I must've gone through every part of the room at least four times now and still I couldn't find anything.

I tried to open the front doors again, kicking it with frustration when the lock remained firm and unyielding. Sora laid a gentle hand on my left bicep, stopping me from continuing my fruitless search, before pulling me away from the wall.

"That's enough," he said with surprising gentleness.

I looked at him, sleep threatening to drag me into the sweet darkness, and looked around me. The flashlight that I had place in the middle of the room to semi-illuminate the room was flickering before finally extinguishing, the batteries exhausted. It must've been already past midnight now and I didn't even realize it.

"Come on," Sora said, pulling me towards the stairs. I, being too tired to care, simply allowed myself to be dragged up the stairs and into the library. Sora had reopened the strange wing underneath the library and upon the metal flooring was the yellowed tablecloth we had found on the first floor. I stumbled slightly as I walked toward the tablecloth, muttering incoherently before stifling a yawn.

"Thanks, Sora," I murmured before lying down on the covered ground. The blue light casted about us with strange comfort and I could see that Sora was just as tired as I was right then.

As exhaustion began to set in after our fruitless search for the others, I couldn't help but hear the strains of a demented version of the Moonlight Sonata playing off in the distance. But, since I was too tired to pay much attention to it, the music faded from my mind immediately once I shut my eyes.

* * *

It was the sound of birds chirping that brought me out of my slumber.

As I blinked away the sand from my eyes, I could see that it was morning. The eeriness of the entire place had seemingly disappeared, leaving behind a simple abandoned mansion. I groaned, not being a morning person, before grimacing as my sore back ached from having slept on an unusually hard surface.

When I sat up, I was shocked.

While Sora had slept beside me, clinging onto me some time during the night, the others had all reappeared and were sleeping rather comfortably in a circle around the two of us.

I took a glance at where we were, and somehow we had managed to move from the library down into the foyer. Sunlight shined brightly through the glass doors at the back of the foyer that I had never noticed before.

Gingerly, I laid Sora's arms down onto the makeshift sleeping mat and made a beeline to the front doors. I twisted the knob and the lock easily gave way. I pulled the doors open and saw morning greet back at me.

"Wake up," I said, shaking each of the SOS Brigade member up.

"Sora, wake up!" The said-teen groaned and slapped my hands away.

"Leave me alone," he muttered.

"We can get out!" I exclaimed. That caught his attention and his eyes immediately snapped open.

"What?"

"We can get out!" I repeated, pointing to the opened doors.

"How?"

"Ugh," groaned Denzel. "What a nightmare." He rubbed at his eyes and smacked his lips in distaste.

"Did we all have the same dream?" asked Riku, stifling a yawn.

"It is possible," said Naminé simply, the first to stand up in preparation for our departure.

"It was all, a dream?" asked Sora with slight confusion.

"I don't want to think about it if it was," I replied. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

The others nodded in agreement and we quickly gathered our things from the ground. Without another look at the strange place, we left the mansion in silence, all of us happy to be out of that place and going home.

I wondered how I was going to explain my sudden "disappearance" last night to my parents.

* * *

Thinking back on it, I should've known that something was seriously wrong when none of the other three—er, I mean four… Goddammit, why did Sora have to recruit Denzel this year?

But I'm rambling.

In any case, as Riku and Naminé both verified it after we came out of the mansion, we somehow managed to get stuck in a Closed Space. The fact that all of us had ended up in one of Sora's bubble is a rather unsettling thought. Not to mention the lack of Nobodies made me wonder how in the world did we get out in the first place!?

When I voiced my concerns that first day after we escaped in the clubroom, Riku only frowned.

"Sora didn't make that Closed Space," he said.

Wait, did I hear that right?

"What do you mean? Isn't he the only one would could possibly make that dimensional rift?" I asked, blinking with confusion.

"No," said Naminé without lifting her head from the new book that she was reading. "He's not the only one."

I continued to blink, not understanding what the other two were suggesting.

"There is another being with the same powers as Sora," said Kairi softly as she entered the clubroom. The smile that was usually on her face was replaced by a worried frown.

"You mean… Sora's not the only god-slash-autoevolution generator-slash-time manipulator here?" I must've sounded really odd then.

"There is another," replied Naminé. "And that person has our counterparts."

"People from your own organizations?" I queried.

"No," replied Riku grimly. "People from rival organizations. And they do not accept Sora's existence."

"You mean, they _know_ that Sora's a god? And you all know that there's another god too?"

"We've always speculated that there was another," said Naminé, looking up for the first time. I knew this matter was very serious then. "We've just never found that person."

"Until now."

Kairi nodded. "Until now."

"What do you think of the other, uh, god, then?" I dared to ask.

"That person is just a shadow of Sora," said Riku firmly. "We have to restore those powers to Sora, who is the rightful owner."

"Oh…" I uttered dumbly. "I see."

Something tells me that a great battle will occur in the future.

Pray that it's not the end of the world!

"By the way, what happened to you all that night?"

The other three looked at each other before turning to me and replying simultaneously, "Classified information."

What… the crap.

_

* * *

Disclaimer: _Kingdom Hearts _and_ Haruhi Suzumiya_ do not belong to me. This piece of work is purely fictional and free to readers. That doesn't give anyone the right to post this on a separate website without my permission though._

_A/N: Oh me gosh! An update! Sorry for the really long wait, but I hit a sort of creative writing block when I was working on this chapter. Although the fic is based loosely on the events of the_ Haruhi Suzumiya_ series, this chapter isn't actually based on any of the chapters from the books. That's probably why I had such a hard time trying to stick with the general theme of _Haruhi_ without making it too mundane or horror-centric seeing how they're in a haunted house after all (wink). To be honest, there were couple of sections where I had to rewrite several times because I felt I was writing more like I do in _The Heart of a Nobody_ rather than in this fic. That only added to the delay of the update. Sorry for that._

_Unfortunately, as I've said in the A/N for one of the latest chapters for _The Heart of a Nobody_, I will currently be focusing my time on completing that fic rather than this one simply because I don't have the time right now to work on both. My apologies for people who prefer this fic over the other, but you'll have to wait awhile for the next update. I am happy to say that there isn't that big of a cliffhanger with this chapter than with the last. I'm sure having that cliffhanger for the past four months wasn't a good move on my part; hopefully this chapter had resolved every question you guys might've had about the haunted mansion, hehe._

_Anyways, until my next update, thanks everyone for sticking with the fic and I appreciate your dedications._


	6. I Challenge You to a Battle

_To reviewers of Chapter 5:_

_LupinandHarry: Well, they were supposed to be investigating a haunted house in Twilight Town (Old Mansion, hehe). Sora, being the one with lots of ideas, obviously had multiple theories about the place. I won't explain how or why the others disappeared when they were in there right now, but I will say that another one of those foreign Closed Spaces will pop up again in the future. Might not be in this 2__nd__ year "book", but it will show up. After all, I've already foreshadowed it in the last section of the chapter._

_RoyalDemon: I do agree it was quite creepy. I think I like that chapter the most thus far in this second year for them. And I realized that I did originally cast Denzel as Roxas's cousin back in _Melancholy_, but by the time I had gone back to reread the chapter and realized my mistake, Denzel's become a permanent member of the SOS Brigade. So, just think of them as two completely different people. The Denzel who's Roxas's cousin is only eight while the Denzel the Slider is actually fourteen, almost fifteen years old by the time Roxas meets him. Likewise, the Marlene who's Roxas's cousin (coincidentally, the first Denzel's sister) is only six, while the Marlene who's not related to Roxas at all (Denzel the Slider's sister) is about ten years old._

**

* * *

Chapter 6 – I Challenge You to a Battle**

* * *

After Colony 1342.

Today is the day of destiny. As we traverse through the bleak nothingness marked by distant stars and planets, I couldn't help but feel the absolute absurdity of the entire situation. Here we are, heading towards a distant battleground that looks like any other part of this empty blackness save for the position of the stars (but let's be honest here, only navigators would actually pay attention to the star maps) fighting an enemy that we know nothing about save for the fact that they're going to destroy our beloved star and consequently our homes around the celestial body.

I scan the scene outside the viewport with narrowed eyes. According to my navigator, the fleet is almost to our target destination, but I see nothing suspicious. Off to my right is the command flagship of the entire fleet and I know that another four starships like the one that I'm currently on right now surrounded the flagship. Behind us are smaller ships, including a medical ship, seven fighter carriers, eleven artillery ships, and hundreds of fighter ships that have all been upgraded for deep space travel.

"Spread out and keep your eyes peeled," a disembodied voice echoes across the command station on my destroyer-class starship. I breathe a sigh and comply with the commands, directing my pilot to steer the starship 30 degrees to the left and travel another mile or so.

"Talk to me, people," comes the voice again.

"There's no one at the south sector," a female voice replies, her voice is strange for a commander, light and uncertain.

"No one at the north sector," replies a male voice.

"East sector, clear," answers a flat female voice.

I'm about to report in when a radar sensor goes off with a "beep, beep, beep".

"Sir! We detect a presence 40 degrees to the southwest."

The sounds of enemy fire crackle across the communications network.

"West sector is under attack! I repeat, west sector is under attack!"

"Prepare for engagement!" I shout. "All pilots man their ships. Battle stations, everyone! Fire at will!"

And thus starts our battle for the galaxies.

* * *

I would be lying to you if I had said that nothing else happened in the two months prior to the New Year. In fact, I'll bet by now that you would've _known_ when I was lying when Sora is the center of strange and utterly ridiculous happenings.

As it happened, about a month after the entire Halloween incident, the president of the Journalism Club had come to the Literature clubroom, handed me a letter without another word and left just as abruptly. Since the letter bore Sora's name, I felt no reason to open it and read it. If it had been addressed to the SOS Brigade, it might've piqued my interest.

On second thought, maybe not.

So without taking another glance at it, I just laid the envelope on top of the computer keyboard in front of the unoccupied swivel chair. Sora had, once again, disappeared to who-knows-where right after class. Who knows if he would show up at the clubroom nowadays too.

I supposed it's only fitting that my decision to not read the letter before Sora did would come biting my ass afterwards.

Sora showed up about thirty minutes after the president of the Journalism Club had left. He was whistling the _Twilight Zone_ theme when he entered, which earned him two pairs of raised eyebrows, an annoying smirk, a blank stare, and a somewhat confused look from the five of us who were in that room.

I looked over to Riku, who shrugged, and back to Sora again. Either he was watching another one of those UFO shows or he knows something that we didn't.

"Sorry I'm late!" he exclaimed with the exuberance of a toddler being taken to Disneyland and plopped down on his chair, spinning around once before stopping himself to face the computer. He looked at the keyboard, noticed the letter and simply…

Tossed it.

My jaw dropped in shock.

"Aren't… you going to open it?" I asked once I got over my surprise. Sora looked at me with curiosity.

"Why? It's just another fan mail," he replied.

Wait, what, fan mail? From the Journalism Club president? What?

"It's from the Journalism Club president," I added.

"So?" he simply said. "If it was important, he would've addressed it to the club and not to me. He could just be another one of those idiots who want to go on a date with me."

I felt like smacking my head right there. Based on the behavior of the president when he handed me that letter, I _seriously_ doubted that he wanted to date Sora. Can he really be that ignorant as to think that everyone likes him? I know that more than half of the school knows his notoriety and I wouldn't doubt that many, _many_ people hold grudges against him.

For what? Who knows. All I know is that he's not below blackmailing to coerce people into doing his bidding after all.

I forced myself to not sigh in exasperation and instead, gritted out the next couple of words. "Why don't you open it already."

Sora glared at me with a frown. "Why don't _you_ read it then?"

And risk you yelling at me later for invasion of privacy? I like my head on my shoulders, thanks.

"It's addressed to you," I replied blandly.

He scowled at my simplicity and reasoning. I could tell that he had wanted me to open the letter so he could boss me around even more, but ha! I win this time. So what if I made him mad. I'm not the one who has to clean up after Sora's mess this time.

"Fine," he spat out before plucking the letter from the waste basket. He tore open the envelope furiously, making me wonder if he had torn the letter when he did that. But of course, he didn't.

The rest of us simply sat in silence as he read the letter.

Oh, why, oh why did I ask him to read the letter?

But seeing how if I didn't do that, we would've been in for a shock a week later when the Journalism club shows up fully prepared. I supposed it was better to be able to prepare than to jump into yet another competition cold.

To let you know why I had somewhat regretted my actions. As Sora read the letter, the scowl that was on his face turned upside down into a smile, which simply grew wider and wider as he continued to read.

That smile never boded well for us.

"What a wonderful opportunity!" he exclaimed upon finishing reading. "Another chance to prove ourselves. I'm really glad that I decided to read the letter after all!"

Wait, what? But- Argh, this is Sora we're dealing with here. I should've known better.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. He flung the letter at me with a grin and spun about in his swivel chair as he leaned back. I read the letter silently with Denzel reading over my shoulder curiously.

"To the despicable leader of the Literature Club," the letter had begun. Huh, did Sora actually refer to this motley crew as the Literature Club rather than the SOS Brigade? "The Journalism Club hereby challenges you all to a battle of wits through the online strategy game _Defense of the Stars_. The battle will be streamed live over the internet on as an official game in the tournament. If we win, all proceeds made from the sales of the Radiant Garden High Chronicle will go to us. If you win, you get bragging rights for beating the number 1 team in Radiant Garden." I frowned at those terms. So they get monetary compensation while we simply get an ego boost? Granted, I'll bet Sora would really like that though.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Didn't we spend all the money we got from that on the costumes?" I was mortified by the thought.

"Yup," said Sora. "That we did."

I stifled a groan of hopelessness and massaged my temples. "How are we going to pay up if we lose then?"

"We won't," he simply grinned. "We'll start strategizing tomorrow."

"And how do you propose we get computers for _that_?"

"I'll figure out a way," he simply replied once again. Oh god, I think I should go talk to Pence about it before Sora does. Great…

* * *

As predicted, around thirty minutes after classes had ended and afterschool activities have officially started the following day, Sora came bounding into the clubroom with three of the Computer Science Club members in tow, Pence obviously being one of them.

While Denzel and I set out to help them set up the laptops that they were providing us, Kairi began brewing a new pot of coffee for our expected "guests". Naminé stared at the laptop contraptions with mild interest while Sora simply grinned and leaned back in his chair watching us. Riku was, strangely enough, nowhere to be found.

It took us a little over an hour to set up all the computers and make sure that they were connected to the internet, functioning correctly with the game, and whatnots.

"You know, I never expected the Journalism Club to be the number one ranked team for DotS," Pence commented when Sora left the room to go do whatever he wanted to do.

"Oh?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "What about you guys?"

"We don't play DotS," he answered. "It's too gimmicky for us. We mostly play co-op shooter games like _Team Bastion _or _Darkness Rising_."

"We do occasionally play _War State _though," commented one of the Computer Science Club members who I never thought to ask for the name.

"Ah," I uttered rather lamely. I am not looking forward to this game, that's for certain.

At the conclusion of the entire "visit" by the Computer Science Club, just as they were leaving, Riku suddenly showed up.

Sometimes I wonder if Riku wasn't a psychic in actuality, being able to see the future or know when exactly the "visitors" would leave. How else do you explain his impeccable timing!?

"Sorry," he said with a frown of disappointment on his face. "I got held up by a project." Psh, yeah right and Sora will break out in song and dance right now. I can see right through that mask of yours. You're not actually sad that you didn't get to help out!

"You're right on time. We're just about to start!" grinned Sora. Without another prompting from Sora, the rest of us took our seats in front of the laptops that were set up on the large rectangular table and opened up the program for the game.

We sat through the introduction, which set the stage for the game; I'll have to admit, it was pretty well done.

For a five year old game using a fairly old graphics engine, that is.

In any case, we got connected to the network for the game and teamed up for a skirmish with some computer controlled enemies. When the battle screen loaded, I discovered why Pence had said the game was too gimmicky.

On three sides of the screen were multiple actions bars and the last side—the top—was where a scrolling marquee sat detailing my stats from health points, energy points, resources, wealth, bases, troops, etc. etc. etc. A rather large minimap panel sat at the upper right hand corner and a timer sat right smack in the middle underneath the scrolling marquee.

The sheer number of panel buttons was absolutely mind boggling even for a gamer like me. Granted, I was never one for hardcore gaming, but seriously, why the hell would anyone need a button for ordering where troops go or what troops to train when you could do it all on the actual battle map!? This is just ridiculous!

First things first though, I needed to pick my hero to lead my troops. I scanned the bottom bar and located the hero panel. The sound of keyboard keys clacking rapidly caught my attention and I found Naminé's fingers practically flying over the keyboard of her laptop. Kairi was seated to her right, leaning over to see what the pale-blond-haired girl was doing. The expression on her face was enough to tell me that whatever Naminé was doing, she was an expert at this game.

Still, never once did she use the mouse, which she actually ended up disconnecting when she kept bumping into it.

I turned my attention away from Naminé and Kairi and back to my own screen, taking my time to select which hero I wanted. In the end, I chose a Clavat Mercenary; little did I know how much money I would end up losing as the inexperienced mercenary, but we'll get to that later.

In any case, when I actually joined the game, I was placed at the southernmost corner of the entire map which probably spanned over hundred screens. When I opened up the map and looked around me, I was shocked by the exploration that we've already done, especially by Naminé's Selkie Fighter. Based on my initial glance, she must've had at least five bases built along with a sizeable fleet that could've easily overwhelmed her opponents if she had actually gone and sought the enemy out. I only just started and have one small base and ten men under my command! She had freaking a thousand pilots with just as many fighter ships, five commanders based on star destroyer-class spaceships, and seventy lieutenants that command who knows how many foot soldiers.

Maybe there is some hope that we'll win. I could only hope.

"Argh!" Sora exclaimed angrily. I looked at him with confusion before quickly turning back to look at the map in front of me. As I had expected, Sora's little outpost had been overrun by a computer fleet. To be sure, Sora had managed to build up a small force, which only reminded me of my insignificant fleet at the current moment. I quickly set out to reinforce my area and pray that the enemy will get intercepted by one of the others before they reached the center of the galaxy that is under our control. After all, it is where our sun is and our galaxy would cease to exist when it's blown up by enemy faction.

I waited anxiously as my fleet is slowly building up. The enemy fleet was still unopposed by the others as they were all too absorbed in what they were doing. Kairi still didn't know what she was doing, mainly exploring the area around her. Denzel appeared to be experimenting with the various technologies available to his Selkie Inventor, and Riku had was building up his own fleet much like what I was doing, though he appeared to be profiting from the build while I was losing my money. Naminé, despite being much further along with her fleet than any others, didn't seem like she was going to attack the invaders at all.

"Naminé," I said, looking up over the laptop screen at the alien interface. The girl had stopped typing and looked up at me with a rather stoic look upon her face.

"The enemy's going to win if we don't stop it." Heh, "we", more like "she".

Naminé's eyes turned back to the screen and another series of clacks sounded before she verbally replied to my comment.

"Acknowledged," she said simply. I watch with fascination and shock as her fleet suddenly appeared near the enemy fleet and proceeded to wipe it out. Now I don't know about you, but that seemed awfully like she had hacked into the game and cheated. That's no good.

"How'd you do that?" asked Sora gapingly.

"Selkie special ability: teleportation. Cool down: one hour," she intoned. If I hadn't been looking at her closely, I would've missed the hint of a smile on her otherwise deadpan face.

That's… overpowered.

I looked back to my screen and opened up my hero panel, sure enough, there was a button with a mouse over tooltip at the bottom of the panel. For Clavats, we get an ability that reduces the time needed for our fleet building by half. Similarly, like the Selkie ability, it was on an hour cool down. While that meant that we Clavats would have the largest fleet in the shortest amount of time, without careful management, it also meant we would run out of resources the fastest once we use our ability. Not to mention that even with a big fleet, I might not be able to defeat an enemy if my fleet took forever to get to the target destination.

What's even worse is, knowing the fact that our opponents would have exactly the same abilities as well.

This sure doesn't sound like it's going to bode well for us.

Once the immediate threat had been eliminated—or neutralized in the game's own terms, I went back to focus on my fleet. I opted not to use my Clavat's special ability just in case I need to rebuild fast later on. I quickly made one freight ship for resource gathering from surrounding planets and asteroids and delegated the rest of my meager resources to making fast fighter ships to defend my position until I have enough resources to make a fighter carrier so I can go actually attack an enemy base.

I looked around at how the others were doing and found Kairi finally getting a hang of this game. However, she had resorted to dedicating all of her resources to making material gathering ships. It was a smart move on her part as Riku had generated a sizeable fleet to defend both himself and Kairi's merchant fleet.

Sora, with his base decimated and thus essentially out of the entire game, had gone over to Denzel's seat and looked upon as the freshmen built his own bases and fleet. Surprisingly, Denzel's fleet was well organized, a bit on the offensive side, but nearly as large as my own.

"Roxas," came Sora's warning hiss. I quickly looked down at my own screen, afraid of angering our consciously bipolar leader even more. Not to mention the fact that I felt embarrassed to have been caught staring at him and Denzel. Thank god Axel isn't here.

It was lucky that I had looked down at the moment when I did. A movement off to the top left corner of the screen caught my eye and I discovered that an enemy fleet had been steadily closing in on me during my momentary inattention. I muttered a soft curse under my breath and quickly selected my fleet to take evasive maneuvers. And not a moment too soon since the enemies fired on where I had been previously. Still, I didn't escape without losses, even though the only loss I had was a small single pilot fighter…

Hmm, I feel like I should know these people who are under my command. Yes, that'll be Bob, you're Harry, you're Mike, that's John…

I must be losing my mind.

Oh wait, the ship that I had just lost is piloted by Sora.

'Kay, I'm done.

I turned my attention back to the matter at hand and retaliated against the attackers, deploying the fighter ships that had been contained in the carrier. They looked like insects on the screen, swarming out of the carrier to join the battlefield like a cloud of locusts. It was a good thing that I had made so many fighters too since they were fast and agile, dodging the heavy artillery that the enemy had sent towards me. Many of them flew past the artillery of the enemy ships to strike at the more vulnerable spots of the destroyers, disabling their barriers and letting my carrier to send off its own volleys against the enemy ships.

Slowly but surely, I managed to decimate the entire enemy fleet. Too bad I had lost more than half of my fighter ships in the process, but whatever.

With that threat behind us, Sora had straightened up from where he stood behind Denzel and walked over to the desktop. He leaned down to write something, but I couldn't see what from where I sat. I'd find out soon enough.

"Commander Riku, Naminé, and Denzel!" he announced rather stately, slapping on a sticker label bordered with blue onto his white jacket. You know those ones that they use at reunions? Especially for old people who graduated from the same high school and such? Yeah, the ones that say "Hello, my name is blank". In the blank white box, Sora had written the word "Admiral" in black Sharpie.

The three people who had been named looked up at our leader. What, we're going to be pretending that we're actually a part of a galactic fleet? And Sora is the admiral of this crew of misfits?

"Send half of your fleet to the enemy galaxy. Destroy them all," he commanded.

"Yes, sir!" replied Riku and Denzel simultaneously and promptly. They even gave him a salute in acknowledgment. Please, don't indulge Sora anymore!

Who am I kidding? All of them except me all think Sora is some all-powerful being after all.

Naminé didn't respond. In fact, the only indication that she had paid any attention to Sora's command was looking up at him then looking back down at her screen to send her ships toward the target destination.

I looked at my own screen and prepared to begin rebuilding my fleet, only to find that my resources and my cache of wealth were too low to even build ten fighter ships.

What the hell?

As it turned out, the Mercenary class gets money from doing side quests within the home galaxy, like hunting for criminals, delivering dangerous materials, and other odd jobs. It was the only way that a Mercenary can generate money, compared to the Scholar class who generate money via researches and consequent scientific advancements or the Merchant class who generate money by manipulating the supply and demand of commodities on a fictional stock market.

This just made me hate the Mercenary class more and more. There goes my plan of joining in the attacking fleet.

* * *

Needless to say, we won that game with Naminé acting pretty much as the vanguard of our rather disorganized lot. The only casualty we had was half of my original fleet, which I never had the time to rebuilt before Naminé literally crashed one of her super destroyer-class ships into the enemy galaxy's star.

That bothered me… a lot.

Oh right, it's just a game.

But I'm rambling.

The other casualty was obviously Sora's entire fleet and base, which had been decimated early on in the entire campaign skirmish, whatever you call it. And wouldn't you believe it. He also had chosen a Clavat Mercenary as his hero.

Curse you all! Hate… you all for making me prove—with no actual deliberate intentions on my part of course—that I'm the one that Sora chose. I hope no one noticed it, or there'll be hell to pay.

Every single afternoon that week spent in the clubroom was on the game, getting used to the controls, mastering our heroes and abilities, and etc. etc.

Eventually, we've all pretty much got a hang of this game. Each of us managed to quickly establish trade routes within the home galaxy to support each other's fleet building. I stayed with a Clavat, but went with a Scholar rather than a Mercenary; and I must say that I find it a lot easier to build my fleet than before.

While Naminé stuck with her Selkie Fighter, Riku had changed from being a Selkie Inventor as he had in our very first battle to a Selkie Mercenary, apparently he's really good at doing all those side quests. Or maybe it's just a Selkie thing. Kairi went with a Yuke Scholar while Denzel opted for a Lilty Warlord. Sora, being the most fickle one out of the bunch, eventually ended up using a Lilty Inventor after some twenty games, including skirmishes with actual people.

And not too surprising to Sora, but somewhat surprising to myself—I'm the rational and skeptical one of the entire bunch after all, we got really good at the game. Sora even documented several strategies to attack enemies with and to defend or counterattack in a black notebook. Not that we'll actually need it after this Saturday…

Though I supposed I did eventually accept that we were practically experts at the game since I had begged Sora to let us lose that one single game against a ranked team who hadn't given much thought to who we were. While Sora hadn't wanted to lose, I had suggested that it would be best to pretend that we still suck at the game as to keep the Journalism Club off guard. If wind of Naminé's obvious expertise in the game got out, our chances for winning the actual ranked battle might've gone like the wind.

Sora had only grudgingly agreed after I bribed him with dinner at Seventh Heaven.

While that initially sounded like it'd just be the two of us, he had upped the ante to treat the entire SOS Brigade. I whole-heartedly agreed without giving it much thought.

So now, I'm broke… Good job, Roxas.

Anyways, whether the others actually had desire to win the ranked battle or whether they just like playing the game, we all stayed until fairly late playing and "strategizing" as Sora aptly labeled it. Even Riku, who worked part time as a delivery boy for the Strife Delivery Service, hadn't gone to work as he often did around 4 PM. Instead, we all stayed at the clubroom well until 7 playing that game.

I don't think I did any of my homework that week and I had been late to dinner so many nights during that week that my mom had yelled at me for not telling her I would be home late every day.

My simple excuse? "Class project."

* * *

Finally, after nearly a week of preparations, the day of reckoning is finally here!

That sounds all sorts of Sora. Goddammit. Must… stop… thinking… like… Sora.

Ow. Okay, that slap by yours truly to yours truly's own cheeks was a bit too hard.

Right, getting back on topic.

That morning, we were gathered in the clubroom for a pre-battle talk as Sora demanded it. The table with the laptops had been pushed to one side of the small rectangular room, leaving room for Sora to conduct his pacing. Naminé had moved her chair back to the corner and was reading yet another hardcover book she borrowed from the library a week prior. She hadn't been able to finish it for obvious reasons.

I sat hunched over in my own fold-up chair in front of the rectangular table with Kairi sitting on the table between me and Riku, who had opted to simply lean against the table. Denzel sat with the back of the chair in front of him, using the top of the back of the chair as a support in case he fell asleep. Apparently there had been some issue with Between and Betwixt that made the Sliders work well into the morning to restore access and stability.

I looked about and couldn't help but make a comparison to Star Wars. Sora's obviously Admiral Ackbar. Naminé would probably be something like Mon Mothma. Then… taking the relationship factors out of the equation, Riku would be Han Solo, Kairi's Leia Organa, Denzel's Lando Calrissian, and I'd be Luke Skywalker!

God, I hope this is just a phase.

"Alright, men," started Sora, his eyes gleaming with happiness, "and women," he added after eying Kairi and Naminé. "Today's the big day! We've been preparing day and night for this day and now it is time for us to show our true potential!"

Why exactly are we having a pep talk for a video game event that doesn't really mean anything for us? Oh right, we need to win to avoid having to pay the Journalism Club out of our own pockets. And by our, I mean mine. I hate you, Sora; hate you so very much.

"We've mastered the game and come up with plenty of strategies to counter their actions. I know that you all know them by heart, so let's get our game faces going and win this! Let's show the world what we've got!"

"Yes sir!" was our smattering of responses, both enthusiastic and semi-enthusiastic. Hey, I gotta keep Sora happy right?

We moved the table back to its original spot in the room and arranged our laptops, making sure that the wires don't get tangled up or get in the way of the mice.

About thirty minutes before game time, we started up the program on our laptops and logged onto the battle network before getting on the x-gamers network as well. Surprisingly, there were a handful of people online waiting to watch the battle. You would think that since the Journalism Club was ranked number one, there wouldn't be many people to watch them compete against an unranked, unknown team. But still, I saw the number 146 in bold on the x-gamers window. Either these people are really bored or want to how _Writer's Block_—the name of the Journalism Club team—would deal with a bunch of rabble-rousers. We were, of course, named eponymously for the club that we were in, _The SOS Brigade_.

The minutes ticked by and my nervousness grew. While I knew what I needed to do in the game, the pre-battle jitters had hit me hard, especially with the amount of chatter that flowed in the x-gamer window as people predicted the outcome, trash talking between people who obviously supported the Journalism Club and the people who didn't support us exactly but hated the Journalism Club's team…

A line of red text grabbed my attention around ten minutes before the start of the battle:

_Welcome to the 453__rd__ ranked battle for Defense of the Stars of this season. Today's match up: #1 _Writer's Block_ vs. _The SOS Brigade._ May the best team win!_

That did it for me. I quickly bent down to open the small backpack that I had brought with me and pulled out a bag of potato chips. I tore it open and the smell of fried potatoes flavored with salt and pepper wafted to my nose. I grabbed a handful of the chips and tossed the bag onto the table, popping the chips into my mouth without waiting for anyone else.

Ah, much better.

Kairi had followed up on my example and leaned back in her seat to pull a drawer out where several boxes and bags of snacks sat. She pulled out a bag of BBQ flavored chips out and chucked it at Sora, who caught it with a grin, then took out a box of white chocolate bars, corn chips, and wafers.

It was certainly a sugary day.

* * *

The entire battle went off without any problems. I tried desperately to not pay attention to the chatter that went on in the x-gamers window as the battle continued, but found myself eying the reactions every once in a while.

We all went with our usual heroes and began our building. Surprisingly, all of our opponents went with either Clavat Inventor or Lilty Inventor. Now I know that Inventors have an advantage with fleet building, but honestly, what the hell?

"We're using Plan D," Sora said simply. I raised an eyebrow at that. Plan D, huh?

"Who's doing it?" I asked solemnly, changing my original plan of building lots of carriers to building more medical ships, fighters, and tankers.

"Naminé?" Sora asked.

"Negative. Resources spent on both fleet and base."

"I'll do it," said Kairi.

"Go for it," the brown-haired leader nodded in approval. I watched as my base and ships got expanded and completed almost immediately. I then quickly resumed my resource gathering from nearby planets.

My eyes wandered over to the scrolling window and read a few of the lines.

_They must suck at offense._

_What the hell are they doing?_

_Where's that ship going? Deep space exploration? Lol._

_Writer's Block's done with building their offense. Man, their opponent's gonna wipe so hard._

_Lol._

True enough, one of the scout ships that we had sent off a few minutes ago reported back the movement of the enemy fleet heading towards us.

"Prepare for combat," said Sora. We all nodded solemnly and began our preparations, launching fighters and engaging our artilleries as our second line of defense. I watched as our rather small, insignificant counter fleet made its way toward the opponent's fleet, stopping just beyond the asteroid belt that we had made after we leeched all the resources from those planets.

_WTF are they doing?_

_Who knows. This'll be quick._

As I predicted, the small fleet was quickly decimated by the larger fleet, and our enemies had become cockier.

"Are you there yet, Kairi?" asked Sora with slight concern. The enemy fleet had nearly reached the edge of our galaxy.

"Almost," frowned the red-haired girl, her eyes scanning her screen to and fro.

"Intercept them with carriers," said Naminé.

"Let's do that," agreed Sora.

"Going to flank them from behind with special ability," said Denzel.

"Wait for me," said our intrepid leader.

The rest of us—besides Kairi that is—all focused on the invading fleet and sent a carrier ship toward my base as I was the closest one to the enemy. I gulped, praying that my base wouldn't be decimated even though we were severely outnumbered.

The defense fleet quickly engaged the enemy and I set my base to attack mode. Luckily for me, they were within range of my artillery.

"Sending reinforcements," said Riku as he instantly teleported three more tankers to my side. I was too engaged in the battle to notice the confused and outright ridicule we were getting.

"Gimme just one second," said Kairi.

"Crap," I muttered as the last line of the fleet in front of me disappeared with a flash. The enemy fleet, though having lost at least three squadrons and a destroyer, was still going strong. I frowned a bit and watched as their fleet got closer to my base, most likely to throw their hardest hits on the base to demolish it.

"Blow it if you want," Sora murmured, slightly unhappy with how the battle was turning out. I looked over to Denzel and Riku, who shrugged.

"Go for it," said Denzel.

"I'm there," said Kairi. My eyes looked up for a brief moment and I smiled at the turn of events. I made the decision to blow up my own base as a grand finale and a distraction to hide our actual strategy, being carried out by Kairi. I smirked as the explosion took out half of the invading fleet as well as Denzel and Riku's own bases. The ensuing conversation on x-gamers was gold.

"_What the fuck!?_", "_Wow… what a nub…_", "_What the hell was that?_" and "_This game is crap._" made up the bulk of the lines that scrolled rapidly across the window. I sat back with that goofy smile on my face as soon after, the words "You win!" flashed across my screen. A line of red appeared on the x-gamers window: "The SOS Brigade wins!"

And it was just silence.

"Yeah!" whooped Sora with a wide grin. He jumped up from his chair and leaped over to Kairi, pulling her up and hugging her tightly.

"Job well done," said Riku as he gave us all a thumb's up. Denzel had joined the group hug while Riku had grabbed the nearest bag of chips and proceeded to chow down. I turned to look at Naminé and found a small smile upon her face, which only made me sigh in relief deeper.

_Holy crap. Did you see that?_

_Damn. That was no deep space exploration team. That was a strike team!_

_WB got owned!_

* * *

The SOS Brigade thus vaulted to the #1 rank for the _Defense of the Stars_ tournament during that season. Of course, we didn't even bothered with any other battles and stayed undefeated. We did lose our #1 ranking about a day after when other ranked battles were fought. But whatever, we beat them. That's all I care!

As to how we actually managed to win, we knew that the Journalism Club was big on offense from the various videos we've seen—in fact, most of the ranked teams were big on offense, not so much on defense, which is ironic since it's called _Defense of the Stars_. And the fact that they never go Selkie or Yuke made it easy for us to come up with a stratagem and lure their entire group to us, leaving their own star undefended. All in all, it was quite easily done!

The Journalism Club had grudgingly accepted defeat and relinquished their claim on our money. Sora had a bounce in his step for the entirety of the following week, even when we went off on another city-wide search, he was unusually cheery.

It was a good week.

_

* * *

Disclaimer: _Kingdom Hearts _and_ Haruhi Suzumiya_ do not belong to me. This piece of work is purely fictional and free to readers. That doesn't give anyone the right to post this on a separate website without my permission though._

_A/N: So… much… rambling… Haha. So quick explanations as to what certain things referred to/where they came from._

_After Colony is the timeline they used for Gundam Wing.  
_

_Defense of the Stars is a name that I made up with Defense of the Ancients and StarCraft in mind. If you read _The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya_ or watched the anime with the same name, you'll know that the game they played is a strategy game as well, but more like Battleship the board game than real-time strategies. Team Bastion comes from Team Fortress while War State is created with WarCraft in mind. I don't recall the source for Darkness Rising at the current moment, maybe… Oblivion, hah._

_Clavat, Selkie, Lilty, and Yuke are all races from the series Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles._

_x-gamers came from xfire… Anything else? Oh yeah, obvious shout out to Star Wars. I originally had thought to rename everything about Star Wars, but was too lazy to come up with witty names, XP._

_Anyhow, at this current rate, it is likely that the next chapter for _Intrigues_ won't be coming out until August. I hope that's not the case, ahhhhhh._

_Thanks for reading._


	7. The Melancholy of Kairi Fischer

_To reviewers of chapter 6:_

_LupinandHarry: I don't think losing is an option with Sora (wink). Of course, it's a lose-lose situation for Roxas since he has to treat the SOS Brigade to Seventh Heaven after that battle, haha. But on the other hand, at least it's a lot cheaper to treat his friends than to pay the Journalism Club, right?_

_The Only Love For Soujiro Seta: I'm glad you like this story. Hope to see you around more, X3._

_Sheep are Fluffy: So typical of me to make a reference to other stuff, lol. But references are fun sometimes, hehe. By the way, good job with getting kicked out of the library for being too loud. I've actually gone to the library to play WoW before too, but it was for raids rather than battlegrounds (I'm a dedicated raider! Well, not so much anymore). I'm not a big fan of PvP, lol._

**

* * *

Chapter 7 – The Melancholy of Kairi Fischer**

* * *

The weather, while not a surprise for the season, got super cold as we hit the middle of December. The campus was rowdy with winter break upon us, but the rowdiness was subdued by the obvious cold and the finals that were to take place two weeks after we resume classes in January. Once again, the heater that Sora had stolen from who-knows-where was put to good use after class everyday in the clubroom, where we still congregated.

Surprisingly, Sora came down with a cold and sat passive in the clubroom that last two weeks, if you could consider the two and a half days right before winter break as a week. Because of this, Sora didn't have the energy to come up with and carry out any crazy schemes that might've been brewing in that head of his.

I welcomed the reprieve with open arms.

Though at the same time, Sora's own subdued-ness made the clubroom a boring place to be. Every day was normal and very quiet. It was as though Sora's own melancholy's spread to the others. Riku didn't smirk annoyingly like he always does. Denzel was always quiet. And Kairi was probably the most miserable one out of them all. The only ones who weren't affected by Sora's rare depression were me and Naminé. But then again, Naminé doesn't get affected by many things.

Yet, thinking back on it, I don't think it was because of Sora that Kairi was melancholic. I think it might've been something to do with what she had to do that Tuesday before school was to be let out.

* * *

That Tuesday before school was to be let out for winter break was a glum one. Clouds covered Radiant Garden the entire day and the weather forecast had predicted a fifty-percent chance of snow. Sora had not shown up to class; probably feeling way too sick to even bother to show up for the last two days of class.

Surprisingly though, he did show up on Monday.

In any case, I was in no rush to leave for the clubroom after class since Sora wasn't there, so I stuck around the classroom after our last period to ask Ms. Skye some questions about our latest biology project.

It was almost four by the time I ended up leaving for the clubroom. As I left the classroom and headed out, I saw that it had started snowing. I shivered at the thought of making the short trek from the classroom building to the clubroom building in the snow. Even though it would have taken only seconds.

I stood in front of the metal double doors that separated the heated interior of the classroom building from the chilly weather. Drawing my thick overcoat closer to my body, I adjusted my grip on the bookbag in my hand. I pulled the edge of my woolen scarf over my nose to protect my lower face and made sure my gloves were snug on my hands before I hunkered down and pushed against the metal bar to open the door.

I cursed under my breath, berating myself for taking such a long time to stay in class when I should've just gone to the clubroom since now I would only be spending a maximum of an hour in the clubroom. My covering seemed to do nothing to insulate me from the cold as the freezing temperature immediately grabbed me. I hissed in a quick breath and hurried across the covered path between the two buildings. The sound of snow crunching under my boots made me weary of slipping on the melted snow, but thankfully I reached the clubroom building unharmed.

The muffled sound of Christmas music filtered down the empty corridor on the first floor of the room. The Dance Club was obviously having a party before the members all parted ways for winter break. Their production of the modern Nutcracker wasn't bad, but still left something to be desired, as Sora said after that opening weekend. Maybe it's because of that that I ended up not going to watch it.

Heaving out a breath, I made to dust off the imaginary snow on my overcoat, stopping when I remembered that I had been under cover the entire journey to the clubroom building. I then took my time to walk up the stairs, each step heavy with thought as I pondered what I was going to do in the clubroom.

All my thinking was for nothing as I turned at the fourth floor landing in the direction of the clubroom. Granted, I hadn't actually decided on what I was doing, but that was a lot of thinking on my part!

Kairi was leaning against the wall, her eyes looking downward. Her short curtain of hair blocked any sort of speculation forming on my part since I wasn't able to see her face. She seemed to be absent-minded though as she kicked at the ground with her boots, moving the two bags that were in her hands with each kick.

"Kairi?" I called out questioningly. Her eyes snapped up at look at me with alarm, clearly caught off guard by my presence.

"Ah, Roxas!" she practically exclaimed upon finally recognizing me.

"Where are the others?" I asked, noticing for the first time that the door to the clubroom was closed and the frosted glass window showed no indication that the room was lighted at all.

"They all went home early," she answered.

"Oh," I replied dumbly. Well, there goes my plan for the afternoon. Oh wait, I didn't even have any plans made for the clubroom. I guess it's time to go home too…

Wait a minute. Why is Kairi still here then?

"Um, Roxas," she started again. She was obviously nervous about whatever it was she wanted to say since she appeared to be itching to start chewing on her fingernails again. "Would you come with me to the marketplace?"

I raised an eyebrow at the strange request. Why did she ask me that?

"Uh," I drew out the sound as I scratched the back of my head. What was even stranger was when the red-haired girl in front of me _did_ nearly start chewing on her fingernails. If it wasn't so cold, I could've sworn I saw her sweating bullets.

"Sure," I soon responded, praying that Kairi would calm down. Surprisingly, the stiffness that had been in her nervous self immediately disappeared with my response and she smiled brilliantly at me. Though she didn't actually breathe a sigh of relief, I could've sworn that it must've happened.

"Great!" she exclaimed, hooking her left arm around my right arm. "Let's get going shall we?"

I could only nod with surprise at the redhead's eagerness. I allowed myself to be led down the four flights of stairs before I finally realized that something was wrong.

"Um, Kairi," I voiced out before we were going to leave the building, a blush visible on my face.

"Hmm?" she cocked her head sideways to glance at me questioningly.

"You know that people are going to get the wrong impression if we keep going like this." I nodded my head towards where our arms were hooked together as though we were a loving couple.

"Oh!" she squeaked with mortification, quickly separating herself from me. Her face was so red that I hope she wouldn't faint with all that blood in her head. She gave a slight nervous laugh and scratched the side of her face. I laughed wryly and pushed open the door, gesturing her to exit like the gentleman that I am.

We made our way out of the walled campus and down the hill where my bike sat forlornly under the snowy weather. Neither one of us spoke since I was too cold to strike up a conversation and Kairi must've been too embarrassed to talk.

I would've talked to her at the bus stop but just as we reached it, the bus had come. I loaded my bike onto the bike rack and boarded the crowded bus with Kairi, grimacing at the hot, humid air that resulted from a mix of the heater being on full blast and the number of passengers compacted in the vehicle.

It was going to be a long, long twenty minutes to the marketplace.

* * *

When we finally reached the marketplace, we struggled along with the majority of the passengers on the bus to get off. The first step off of the bus caused me to shiver like mad, having been standing in something like a packed sauna for quite awhile. Even after I pulled my bike off of the bike rack, I continued to shiver, my legs refusing to move until my body warmed up.

Seriously, I could feel my teeth chattering with cold.

"I think we should go get something hot to drink," I suggested; I managed to not let my teeth chatter while I voiced the suggestion.

"I agree," replied Kairi. She was shivering as well.

Together, we made our way over to the tea shop that we had filmed our movie at, where a nice line had already formed, leading into the shop.

"I'm going to go lock up my bike," I started once we reached the end of the line just outside of the tea shop.

"Okay," was the quick reply accompanied by a small smile.

I returned the smile and made my way through the sparse crowd to reach the bike racks just a ways away from the tea shop. I quickly secured it in an empty slot, making sure the lock's tight, before literally running back to the tea shop, skidding to a stop with the melting snow. I saw that the line outside had dwindled down to a few people, so I entered into the bustling shop and found Kairi standing in the middle of the line between the doors and the counter.

The din in the shop made it difficult for me to verbally inform Kairi that I'm back, so I tapped her shoulder lightly. She jumped at the contact and turned sharply towards me, the flush that was on her face paled until she realized who it was. She gave me a nervous smile before turning back to the line, moving quickly when she saw a small gap in front of her.

I followed her at a slower pace, confused by the nervousness that she suddenly felt once again. I was especially bewildered by her constant checking of the giant watch that she was wearing on that day. Has she always worn that watch?

When it was our turn, Kairi seemed to stumble over her own words when she ordered a tall white chocolate mocha with an extra shot of espresso. While my logic questioned her choice of drink, since caffeine would've only made her more jumpy, I opted not to say anything and placed my own order simply—a simple chai tea latte.

It was strange that Kairi wasn't checking her watch constantly after we got our drinks. In fact, it seemed like she had completely gotten over her jumpy phase. Maybe coffee calms her down rather than makes her jittery?

But she always seems jitterier after serving coffee in the clubroom. Maybe it's Sora's fault that she's jumpier. Meh, I'm just throwing things out now.

We sat at the small table that just happened to empty for us for awhile, savoring our drinks and enjoying ourselves otherwise. Towards the end though, Kairi had started checking her watch again after drinking about half of her coffee. She looked out at the snowy grounds and back at her watch over and over again. It started to make me worry too.

I was almost done with my own chai before I decided to say something.

"Kairi, your coffee's getting cold," I pointed out.

"Oh!" she exclaimed with a jump. She quickly took her cup and downed several gulps of the cooling drink. Her face contorted with a grimace as the bitter cold drink went down her throat. I resisted the urge to burst out laughing, knowing perfectly well that Kairi probably would be mortified by that.

With our drinks finished, we left the tea shop and made our way through the sparse crowd on this cold day.

Kairi, once again, was preoccupied and seemed to have forgotten what she came here to do. As such, we probably wandered about for a good ten minutes, passing by the coffee bean and tea leaf store twice before we finally entered into the small establishment. The red-haired time traveler obviously had wanted to try some new teas, which was fine by me. Tea was actually a good substitute for coffee on days when I didn't want to drink coffee.

The smell of tea and coffee reminded me of the tea shop we were at a while ago and I saw that batches of tea leaves and coffee beans sat in large metal containers out in the open. The temperature and the dryness of the shop were obviously kept to allow for such displays of the roasted things.

While Kairi made a beeline to the counter, apparently asking the clerk about the special or what batch of coffee beans or tea leaves are of particular note this week, I opted to take a stroll through the place. The store was separated into two sections: coffee on the left and tea on the right, with the cashier's counter in the center of the shop. Smaller tins were placed on shelves that lined the walls of the store, organized into regions: Chinese, Japanese, English, Spanish, and others to name a few for the teas.

Some teas I recognized, others I didn't and I've never really been one to try out different teas. Maybe I should change that. I heard that Chrysanthemum tea was good for you. Or Jasmine green tea.

When I came to the Japanese section, I couldn't help but stare at the variety of Japanese green tea. Houji, genmaicha, sencha, konbu, ume, ume with konbu, etc. etc. etc. I'm sure if my mom was here, she'd had a field day with all this; she does love tea after all. God, this is rather confusing.

I looked back at Kairi, who was still talking to the clerk, and then back at the display of Japanese tea, wondering if I should buy a tin for my mom. But what would she want? I know we still have a batch of houji, genmaicha, and sencha at home. Would she want konbu cha? Maybe make some ochazuke? Mmm, ochazuke.

I was… unable to decide. So off I go to another section, which happened to be coffee. Ahh, caffeine…

Hmm, I think we've been here for awhile. Looking at my watch… yup, it's almost 5:30. Maybe we're killing time now? Especially since Kairi doesn't seem like she's going to end her conversation with the clerk any time soon.

Ironic, at the same time that I thought about that, Kairi looked at her gigantic watch and let out a rather loud "eep!" She quickly finished her transactions with the clerk, purchasing what looked like a pound of Nibelheim coffee and a 12 oz. tin of oolong tea.

Wait a minute, isn't Nibelheim coffee really expensive?

"Sorry I took so long," she said with a huff.

"No problem," I replied, still wondering what's going on.

"We need to go right now," she continued, a serious look on her face. I don't think I've ever seen her so serious before.

"Um, 'kay," I uttered lamely. Come on, what else was I supposed to say!?

I followed Kairi out of the shop and away from the bike racks and the bus stop. We exited the marketplace and hurried down an empty stretch of road towards a residential area. It was a rather eerie place to be honest.

We stopped at a random corner and Kairi pulled out a map from the paper bag that she had been carrying besides her bookbag. She looked at it for a few moments, panic apparently rising within her as she "um'd" and looked about our surroundings with mild confusion.

"We're here," I pointed out calmly—surprisingly actually, unfolding the map further to show the corner that we were on. Please stop being panicky, I'm starting to panic too!

My red-haired companion muttered a quick thanks and breathed a sigh of relief. She then placed the paper bag on the ground, stuffing the map into her book bag and pulled out rather odd things.

An empty juice box, a box of nails, and a hammer.

What the hell?

"Can you nail this juice box to the ground…" she pointed at a specific snowy spot. "Right here?"

"Uh…"

"There's no time to explain," she continued. "I'll tell you everything after this is done."

"Okay…" I was still confused, but there's nothing else I can do but comply. I'm sure it's one of her missions or something, but pulling a prank hardly seems like something time travelers would resort to…

It was rather amazing that there was no one else on that intersection, absolutely no traffic. There weren't even patrolling cops that should've come around.

But seriously though, I probably didn't take enough time for a police car to randomly show up at the intersection, heh.

Nailing the box to the ground was a lot harder than it sounds, especially when the ground is wet and pretty much covered with snow. I had to dig out a lot of snow before I actually managed to start securing the box to the ground. Even then, trying hard not to hit my numb fingers with the hammer was a challenge in itself.

Still, after fifteen minutes of work, with my soft curses and the thuds of hammer hitting the nail the only thing that filled the air in those fifteen minutes, I got it done. I was slightly tempted to start yelling louder whenever the hammer slipped to hit my thumb, but I was too embarrassed to do that.

Looking down at my handy work, I shoved a handful of snow back towards the corners of the box, just to cover up the nails. Why did I do that, I have no idea.

Kairi took the hammer and stuffed it into her book bag as well, tossing the wet paper bag into a nearby trash can. She then hurried over to the opposite side of the road, where a snow covered bush was conveniently located and hid behind it.

"What are we doing?" I asked, only to have her "shh" rather harshly at me. So I did what she was doing and watched the prank juice box sit there until some unsuspecting person comes along and trips over it.

Honestly, what the hell _are_ we doing?  
A few minutes after we hid, a rather angry looking kid came down this stretch of road, kicking at the snow at his feet to vent his frustrations. His walk down the sidewalk was rather slow, so it made sense that he would stop at the juice box. He kicked at the juice box, shouting out profanities when the box didn't budge, only leaving him with a few sore toes.

"What the hell!?" he muttered angrily, bending down look at the juice box, discovering that it had been nailed to the ground.

"What kind of a prank is this?" he said aloud once again, pulling at the box to free it. He did succeed once he applied a lot of force that ended with him losing his balance. He landed on his bum with another profanity just as a blue van raced down the street toward the corner when he was. It jumped onto the sidewalk, passing dangerously close to the fallen kid, and screamed through the intersection without even a stop.

All I saw was a glimpse of slicked back blond hair on a pale faced woman with a sadistic scowl on her face.

When I looked back at the kid, he was covered in muddy snow and the juice box was in his hand, the nails still stuck to the bottom of the box.

"This is the worst day of my fucking life!" he yelled. I feel sorry for the guy…

"Well, sucks for you!" came a reply from somewhere in the neighborhood. The kid scowled angrily, apparently not even phased by that brush of death. He chucked the box onto the road and patted himself off before continuing on his way. Only after he disappeared down the street did we emerge from our hiding place.

Kairi quickly picked up the juice box and tossed it into the trash can as well, a relieved smile on her face.

"Who was that?" I asked. "Did we just save him?"

"You did," she replied happily. "As a time traveler, I'm not allowed to interfere with what would happen in the past. Since you are of this timeline, you are allowed to." She gestured for us to begin our walk back to the marketplace.

"The boy that you just saved is a very important person in the future. He is the one who will discover time traveling," she continued. I opened my mouth to ask her something, but she stopped me. "I've been allowed to tell you this from my superiors."

"Oh." That makes sense. "What about the one in the van?"

"Some people in my timeline do not feel the same way that my organization does in regards to time traveling. They do not think that we should be allowed to travel through time as we do. The woman that you have just seen is one of the people who feel that way."

"So by killing the person responsible for the discovery of time traveling, she's hoping to alter the future?"

"Yes," she answered with a nod. "But we must preserve the timeline since it is Sora's wish."

"What kind of people don't want to time travel if they're from the future?"

"People who believe that Sora is not the One responsible for their powers," she replied grimly. "They believe in that other person and that other person does not want our version of time traveling to be possible."

"That… makes no sense," I uttered lamely. "If that other person gave them the power to time travel, then why would they kill the discoverer?"

"That's because they believe that the One responsible for their powers is the true discoverer of time traveling. Through Sora, the kid that you saved is given the knowing to discover how to time travel in the future. Just think of him as a middleman, an instrument of sorts."

"One that Sora uses to make his universe," I ended.

"Exactly."

I mulled over her words until we reached the marketplace, at which she left me with a grateful smile on her face. I waved good-bye rather absent-mindedly. To be honest, I'm starting to be worried about a future crazy war that's going to break out between Sora and this mystery person who supposedly has part of Sora's powers.

I guess technically Sora seems likely to make a mystery person who has his powers too. Sora's obviously looking for trouble like that. Or maybe someone else is actually the One behind all this and deliberately made Sora and this other person have the same powers and let their supporters think that Sora or this other person is the one who created them, but is actually not…

I'm confusing myself here now. Freaking chain of command is not making sense.

I shall focus on praying that when Sora meets his rival god, or something, the universe doesn't explode.

Of course, if war does break out, I'm assuming their respective supporters out of a science fiction novel would be engaged in this war as well.

That makes me wonder where does that leave me…

Please don't put me at the center of this conflict. I still have two and a half more years of high school to go!

Damn.

_

* * *

Disclaimer: _Kingdom Hearts _and_ Haruhi Suzumiya_ do not belong to me. This piece of work is purely fictional and free to readers. That doesn't give anyone the right to post this on a separate website without my permission though._

_A/N: A bit on the short side, but that's how the chapters for this series are supposed to be. Short and simple, hehe._

_In any case, we delve deeper into the "lore" of the story, setting up for a future encounter for Roxas with new people that might not be friendly. However, direct encounter with these people won't actually happen for another year or so in Roxas's time. As in, he'll be a third year at Radiant Garden High School before he finds out who this other person with powers identical to Sora's own. But I'm getting ahead of myself…_

_Ochazuke is a Japanese after-meal sort of thing with white rice (leftovers or fresh, doesn't matter) in a bowl topped with green tea, seaweed, rice cracker balls, and occasionally grilled salmon. It's a simple dish and I've had it many times for lunch or dinner on the weekends when I'm too lazy, hehe. Soupy rice is most delish, XD._

_On another note, the second season of the _Haruhi Suzumiya_ anime's being aired now apparently. Yet, I haven't had the time to check it out. Though, watching the anime might inspire me to write more of this series. Blahhhhhhhh._

_Also, while this might constitute as a crossover in terms of KH being set in sort of _Haruhi_ universe, the fact that I didn't put any actual _Haruhi _characters in this fic (besides the Data Thought Integration Entity and general terms used in the _Haruhi_ universe) doesn't seem like this fic should be placed in the crossover section. Hmm. Maybe it'll be fine for me to just keep it in the general KH section, hehe._

_Anyways, hope you enjoyed the chapter and my rambling. See you next time~_


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